StackOverflow has a big readership. There are many skills which can be discussed, and it is very easy to specify exactly what skills are discussed. Example: "I'm using Rails 3.1.2 and rspec and I am running into this problem when writing a routing test".
MartialArts.StackExchange has a small readership. There are many, many more names to the skills that can be used (TKD, TSD, all the genres of karate, all the genres of kungfu, all the Japanese swordsmanship styles.....) than on StackOverflow, and the number of people who know (let alone have expertise in!) a given skill is much smaller. In addition, the people who have such expertise in a skill AND USE THE WEBSITE is sometimes nil. I find relatively fortunate that there is a Bujinkan teacher here, since it's a fairly obscure but very deep/layered system; I believe that baguazhang and isshinryu karate also end up in the list of really rare styles on this website. Of course, this is somewhat representative. Isshinryu is not as big as TKD, and Bagua is only beginning to gain popularity.
Still, it's -really easy- to ask a -very specific- question: "How does one perform a noto in Hasegawa-ryu?" Unfortunately, you need to pray that someone who also knows the style is around and can answer that question. I've studied Japanese swordsmanship for a few years and I know there are as many ways to sheathe the sword as there are styles.
So, if a very specific question, StackOverflow-style, is not likely to get an answer, what are we left with?
This has been one of the main reasons for my attempts at generic questions that serve every martial art, every practitioner (Unfortunately, it took me this long to get the epiphany and be able to articulate it). Here is a list of the few questions I have asked. One generated considerable debate and was closed twice, and the others generated a little less debate and remained open (My mind works in weird ways).
So, with that in mind, and understanding that we can't ask everyone to try and make abstraction of the details, maybe there are better ways to ask questions, and yet understand that the answer may:
- not be what you want to hear
- not match your expectations
Then we can ask a question that is not matched to a particular style, and can be answered by a wider majority of people, and still be useful.
Er... Yeah. I don't have a "real" question here, this is really to ... Start a conversation and see where it leads.