Refining scope and new site name

Question

_{This is part of the second step into an attempted reboot of this community: Rebooting Cognitive Sciences: a Suggested Approach}

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This site is now several years in beta, and it is about time we revisit and more concretely define which scientific disciplines are in scope, and how this should be reflected in the site name. The discussion on these issues is summarized in the recent community review:

Scope: Which fields of study can ask questions here? How to deal with overlap with other sites?

• We decided to welcome any cognitive science, in line with the definition of Wikipedia. This includes any field which tackles the mind or its processes (behavior), including animals. E.g., Human-Computer Interaction, Neurobiology, Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Neuroinformatics.
• This implies an overlap with sites like, e.g., Programmers, Biology, UX, Cross Validated, and Skeptics. However, when questions do not pertain to the mind or behavior, they are off topic here: e.g. some questions about HCI, statistics, coding experiments.
• However, generally we do want to have a scientific focus (whether we accept laymen or not). E.g. the Autism proposal was not deemed a good fit for this site.
• Concrete guidelines for overlap with specific sites is desirable: e.g., Biology, in particular neurobiology seems to repeatedly overlap.
• What to do with questions about highly specific tools and tool requests is still undecided. In particular, we have many questions on neuroscience software.
• There is some discussion on whether or not psychiatry should remain in scope.
• Bias-laden questions are off-topic, e.g., improbably human conditions.
• Our about (help section) of the site should clearly communicate what is in scope and what is not.

Site name: We have noticed our site name might lead to confusion on what this site is, what new name should we use?

• The name "Cognitive Sciences" can be interpreted to only welcome cognitive science and cognitive psychology, thus excluding, e.g., non-cognitive sub-disciplines of psychology. We have collected evidence showcasing that psychology and neuroscience is often perceived to be excluded.
• There is a strong majority favoring a name change.
• When choosing a new name, the url prefix needs to be considered as well.
• Many popular suggestions follow the format "A and B": Cognitive Science and Psychology, Psychology and Neuroscience, Mind and Brain.
• An attempt at getting an overview of consensus resulted in two favorites (Psychology and Neuroscience, and Mind and Brain), with Psychology and Neuroscience as a clear winner.
• Unfortunately these suggestions go against the naming standards of SE, which 'suggest' avoiding "X and B" like names.
• Regardless, this is a topic which keeps resurfacing. The name keeps causing confusion even for active researchers in the fields.

The next step now is to collect concrete proposals for a potential different scope and site name, keeping in mind the issues mentioned above. A proposal would do well by including the following:

1. An exhaustive list of scientific disciplines we want to target explicitly.
2. A list of scientific disciplines we potentially do not want to consider, including a motivation why.
3. A suggestion on how to handle overlap with specific other sites.
4. A suggestion on how to handle questions only tangentially related to the mind, which do not have a home on other sites (given the recent events of the closed neuroscience proposal).
5. A suggested site name and url prefix, reflecting the earlier described scope, including a motivation.

Answer 1

Science

Before starting to list all the bullet points, I want to stress the importance of the word science. That is the beauty of the current site name; it is immediately clear we want to discuss science. Although I actually enjoy the current name, I will suggest a new one at bullet point 5. So, here goes:

The proposal

1. 1. Neuro-, social-, industry/organizational-, sports-, developmental, behavioral- psychology. The science behind human-factors/HCI, psychiatry, human movements, sociology, linguistics.
   2. Beside theories and facts, conducting scientific research is also incredibly important. Therefore, methodological questions are also on topic. These methods should be somewhat related to behavior or the brain, including behavioral experimental paradigms and neuroscientific methods.
2. 1. Pseudoscience (let's consider this a science for the moment). The reason is clear.
   2. Topics described in bullet point 1 that are not related to science (e.g. usability issues, parenting tips, psychiatric tips or diagnosis). These are generally self-help questions, opinion based, or clearly belong on another SE-site (e.g. ux, parenting and health, respectively).
   3. Everything other that is not related to behavior or the brain (e.g. physics, philosophy, English language, world building, etc. etc.).
3. 1. Biology: Everything that is not related to the brain or behavior should be considered off-topic. This includes (but is not limited to) ecology, genetics, non-animal biology, etc.. All things close to the brain, (networks of) neurons, muscles, sensory systems are on-topic.
   2. Cross Validated: There are only few statistical methods that are specific for behavioral sciences, and many should thus be migrated, even if they are posed within a behavioral scientific context. Only if the questions are relevant for our site and are conceptual of nature (i.e. not about mathematics or "how- do you calculate") we should welcome them.
   3. Stack Overflow: I believe there is little overlap here. If they post a line of code in which we must find the incorrect use of a for-loop, then definitely off-topic here. If the question is conceptual and about behavioral sciences (e.g. fieldTrip/EegLAB function) then it will be off-topic at Stack Overflow, and should be on-topic here.

4. Each new 'tangentially' related topic should be discussed in a meta post, as is happening now. We cannot decide beforehand what we would accept or not, and we must need acceptance of the current user base. If we see a new Area51 proposal or a trend in new questions that are asked here, we can start the discussion.

5. The new name would become Psychological Sciences. I believe it is incredibly important to keep the word science in the name, to clearly show we are about science and not pseudoscience or self-help questions. Psychological, as opposed to Cognitive, should invite more users to come here and will make it easier to find the website. As discussed here as well: (Why is this stack exchange called 'Cognitive Sciences'?), people do not likely search for Cognitive. The url-prefix will become pscience.stackexchange.com. I thought it is a nice play of words and not a cumbersome abbreviation. Alternatively, I would also accept psych.stackexchange.com.

I do want to express my fear that using the name Psychological Sciences will likely attract many laymen that ask off-topic, self-help and opinionated questions. Psychology is (or sounds) more accessible than Cognition, since the term is better known. If we choose for Psychological Sciences, we have to stay vigilant and close each of these questions without mercy.

Answer 2

I suggest we make a Venn diagram of all the related disciplines, choose one or two biggest circles that cover most areas that we want, then name the site according to that. It will be intuitive, and I think it will clear all the debates. If there is any question about the scope on the site in the future, we just need to re-consider the field again.

For example, this is a discipline diagram for UX: