Martial arts off-topic?

Question

Recently asked a question on Marital arts. It has already had votes to be closed however I feel that closing types of questions that may very on school, instructor, or "may" be a "personal view" is bad form.

Why?:-

• There is an answer. A separate opinion on ever issue/question is ok this is why the voting aspect is there to get the best answer.
• This type of question will help new instructors (like myself)
• This will help new people looking into the sport.
• Where else can you ask for an outside perspective from other informed martial artist? (If anyone here wanted that takes class they could ask the instructor)

Personally if this type of question is not allowed I will probably end up leave the community for martial arts. Also please refer to this post as well...

Are questions related to running martial arts classes on-topic?

Answer 1

I voted your question as primarily opinion based because, to me, without a specific context to go by, it seemed like an almost philosophical question. It's like asking "Is there a difference between a person and a human?"

Stack Exchange is not a format that invites debate or long-form discussion. Sometimes it's hard to nail down exactly what is too broad, but we know it when we see it, hence the voting system. Hence, also, why it requires multiple close votes to close a question.

Consider the difference between this, real question, Between Kyokushin and Shotokan, which focuses more on hard sparring and less on kata?, and a fake question of my own invention: "Should I do Shotokan or Kyokushin". Both questions seek to compare and contrast the two arts, but the real question does so in a specific way that is definitively answerable. If my fake question had no further context than "I'm thinking about doing either Shotokan or Kyokushin, which should I do?" it would likely by closed. If, however, the OP of my fake question clarified further, saying "I've got a red belt in Goju Ryu, and I have moved to a location where only Shotokan and Kyokushin are available. Which art is most compatible with my previous training in terms of transferable skills." That's a question we can answer.

I also try to ask myself when asking a question, "When will this question be done? How will I know that I can go ahead and click that accept button?" If I can't answer that, I don't post. Or, I post and let the community help me clarify the question to something answerable.

As to your question of "Where else can you ask for an outside perspective from other informed martial artist?"

If you're looking for long-form discussion, that's what Reddit is for.

Answer 2

There are many problems with your question.

• Teacher and instructor are synonymous so the only possible difference is in petty semantics. Thus it is too narrow to be useful to anyone.
• Why would a style/school/dojo/gym enforce an arbitrary difference between teacher and instructor is nebulous and can neither be answered without any context nor is very useful outside of that narrow context.
• Whether school or form make a difference to what they call whomever teaches is clear and obvious: sensei, sufi, coach... Again, context it key: there is no general usage.
• Sensei can be used to refer to a teacher or your dentist. Context is key. Now, if you were to ask the differences between a sensei, a shihan, and a Shidoin within an Aikido context, that would be an interesting question.
• You question does read like a request for a motivation poster: teacher good, instructor bad. Or something like that...
• There is no way you could mark a "best" answer because all answer might get different context. Would an Aikido specific answer be better than a fencing one? It's all terribly subjective.
• There is no problem you are trying to solve: you invite discussions, lists, and bad subjective answers.

We do Good Subjective, Bad Subjective on stack sites and if you can reframe your question to fit those rules, great.

Answer 3

The problem is not that the answer can vary by schools; it's that the question is so broad as to be meaningless.

"Is it better to walk to the left or the right?" is a question anyone can ask, but without key context (Where are you standing? Where are you trying to go? What is around you?) it's a meaningless question which cannot create informed answers.

In reality, the question you've asked ranges from: "specifics for a lineage with specific ranks" to "whoever is teaching is the teacher at the moment" and being that broad the answer really is "it is whatever you (individually, collectively) want it to be". In other words, there's no good answer because the question is too wide.

You may want to look a little closer at: https://martialarts.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Also look at some of the questions/answers in the Stackexchange currently and if any stand out to you as having good answers, consider what the question may have done in specificity to elicit better answers.