Can we improve our short network pitch?

Question

All SE sites have a short blurb that appears on network profiles and the list of all sites. Here are some examples:

Ours currently is:

That feels weak to me. First off, I think "professional and aspiring" goes without saying on Stack Exchange these days, though it probably didn't back when this was written six years ago. Lots of sites span the gamut of interest from casual hobbyists to seasoned professionals. We don't need to expend valuable character count on that.

Meanwhile, the only specific type of writer we call out is reviewers, which wouldn't be my first choice among all the kinds of writing we cover. Further, I've gotten hints recently that while we know that "author" is an appropriate term for any kind of writer, many people hear "novelist" (or fiction more broadly). Fiction will always dominate and that's fine, but I've run into people on the network who think that academic, scientific, and technical writing are off-topic here.

So it seems like we're not doing a great job of conveying the range of our scope, and we also have room for a few more words.

What should our network blurb say? I'll propose an answer, but please share yours too. (I'm a technical writer; marketing is not my specialty.) I'd like to arrive at a consensus and then make a feature request to change it.

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For reference, in our tour we say:

Writers Stack Exchange is a question-and-answer site for authors, editors, technical writers, reviewers, bloggers, journalists, and other professional and aspiring writers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about writing, copywriting, publishing or editing.

And in the "ask about" section farther down that page we say:

Ask about...
- Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing
- Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics
- General copywriting
- Professional-level blogging
- The publishing and editing process itself

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Update: I asked SE to make the change and learned that "Q&A for" is baked in -- we can't change that part to "Q&A on" or "Q&A about" or anything else. We need a string that starts after "Q&A on". (SE calls this string the "audience", by the way.)

Answer 1

I think it would be useful to indicate something of the approach and the limits of what is on topic. I am thinking something like:

Q&A for professional and aspiring professional writers, with a focus on the crafts of writing, editing, and publishing as they apply to fiction, non-fiction, technical documentation, scholarly articles, business materials, scripts, and other written works.

I think the emphasis on craft and professional intent is important because these are matters on which it is possible to ask and answer answerable questions. Writing as a hobby, or a therapy, as ars gratia artis, is a fine and good thing, but it really is not possible to ask and answer SE-style questions about these things.

However, we can ask and answer questions about the craft of professional writing, no matter what the field, because the things you do as a professional writer have measureable outcomes and therefore questions about it can be answered with an appeal to facts.

EDIT based on Monica's comment:

Shorter version:

Q&A on the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, stage, screen, and business writing.

EDIT based on Lauren's comment:

Q&A on the craft of professional writing, editing, and publishing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, stage, screen, and business writing.

FURTHER EDIT based on comments:

Q&A on the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing.

YET ANOTHER EDIT because the first two words have to be "Q&A for";

Q&A for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing.

Answer 2

How's this?

Q&A for people interested in writing, editing, and publishing fiction, non-fiction, technical documentation, scholarly articles, business materials, scripts, and other written works.

Instead of listing kinds of people, like our current blurb (authors, editors, etc), I want to show two orthogonal dimensions:

• phases (writing, editing, publishing)
• types of written works (I tried to choose a wide but representative set)

Answer 3

Writers Stack Exchange is a question-and-answer site for authors, editors, technical writers, reviewers, bloggers, journalists, and other professional and aspiring writers. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about writing, copywriting, publishing or editing.

Could be rewritten as:

Writers Stack Exchange is a Q&A site for anyone who is interested in refining and expanding their technical knowledge of writing. We discuss a wide field of topics such as editing, publishing, fiction, non-fiction, technical documentation, scholarly articles, business writing, scripts, and the literary devices that they are comprised of. Come on in! Your next adventure story is one question away!

Okay, maybe my last sentence trying to ask people to join seems a little too gimmicky but in the end it is a sales pitch and you always ask for the sale!

Ask about:

• Non-fiction, technical, or scholarly writing
• Writing fiction, poetry, song lyrics
• General copywriting
• Professional-level blogging
• The publishing and editing process itself

I don't see any need to change this though it does feel redundant to state. Unfortunately though, we do need redundancy as some people do need it in plain English listed off.

What I would like to add in if it is not already is a blurb about what we cannot answer! Just a quick list of things such as critiques, how to's, specific content pertaining to their writing etc. Right now in the ask a question page, they don't really specify that in the "How to Ask" section. If we can provide some where to bring the main off topic subjects to the front, it may help alleviate some of our bad questions.

Right now, someone has to be willing to drill through links and faq pages to find the list and let's be honest, most people are lazy. If it isn't right in front of them, they are not really going to bother looking for it. Especially if they don't know they need to read through it.

In our high level "off topics" section, we can provide the direct link to the page which discusses in detail what is on and off topic. I feel it would be beneficial to provide a simple high level on and off topic list up front, we can hopefully see better formed questions and not close as many either.