Obviously there is significant overlap between scifi.SE and movies.SE.
Do you spend a significant amount of time on movies.SE? Why or why not? How is the other site different in culture? Content? Quality of questions? Quality of answer? If you spend time on both, how do you decide where to post?
(This is purely discussion, sorry if it's considered off topic -- frankly I don't understand want would be considered off-topic on meta.)
I have almost the same rep on both sites, around 4500, but I spend more of my time on scifi (Although not by much).
Generally if I have a question about a science fiction show or movie, and it relates to the science or fantasy aspects, I will ask it here. That's because it is why scifi is here, and I am much more likely to get a good answer relating to those aspects from the people that have that as their primary interest.
If the question is not really about the science fiction/fantasy aspects, then I will ask it on movies.se. (Such as why was Matthew McConaughey cast in the lead for Interstellar?)
I have gotten excellent answers from both, and I believe both have a very receptive culture.
If the question is such that it would be a fit on either site, then I again consider where I am most likely to get a comprehensive, educated answer and post appropriately.
I spend very little time on Movies.se.
I tend to go in-depth on a small number of fictional universes – Harry Potter, Doctor Who and the MCU have been recent favourites. Beyond those, my interests skew towards sci-fi and fantasy anyway, and I don’t watch many other TV shows or movies.
That means a lot of the posts on M&TV just aren’t interesting to me. And of those posts that are, they’re a small incremental gain over what I’m already reading on this site – those interests are already well covered here.
That’s not a criticism of M&TV; it’s just a reflection of my personal tastes.
I have no qualms with the culture of M&TV. I usually enjoy the answers I read there. All the M&TV users I’ve talked to have been as friendly and considerate as on any other stack. It’s just not a place where I’ve spent much time myself.
I was on SFF first. That inertia counts for a lot:
I have spent very little time there, because "All movies and television shows ever" is too broad for my taste, and because M&TV has very few questions about the movies and shows I like. It seems like they are focused on recent movies and shows, and I'm not a big fan of most recent movies and shows. The answer quality often leaves much to be desired, in my experience, perhaps because the site is so focused on movies and shows alone, rather than books that inspired said movies and shows, which leaves them with little recourse apart from citing wikis of highly questionable merit.
Update: I'm more active on M&TV of late, and I have seen some fascinating Q&A's as well as some dreadful stuff (the dreadful stuff mainly consisting of some of the worst Story ID questions I've ever encountered). The mods are awesome, and the top contributors are fantastic. My opinion of the site has drastically improved, and some of my favorite SE people are M&TV regulars, like Catija, Napoleon Wilson, Ankit Sharma, and Walt. I strongly recommend that SF&F members spend more time over there, because it is well worth the effort and the problems on M&TV will only be resolved if more people post high quality Q&A there.
I have hardy ever visited Movies.SE, because my primary interest is in written SF and fantasy, not movies or TV.
I split my time fairly evenly between Movies.SE and SciFi.SE and I'm active often in both main chatrooms - but SciFi.SE has a more active community and questions/answers that are more interesting to me, so naturally I end up answering and asking more questions over here.
Anyone who has visiting my profile will know that my main area of interest is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a topic that questions could be asked about on either site, which makes for a handy comparison of which site I prefer. My reputation score on SciFi.SE is currently 9,414 but my reputation score on Movies.SE is just 1,712.
In general I will answer question on either site - but when choosing to ask a question, I will often choose this one unless it is about the "movie-ness" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, such as contract lengths, film versions etc. I think the main reason for this is the aforementioned community activity - I recognize a dozen or so users on this site that I have spoken to in chat, but only an small group (mostly moderators) over in Movies.SE.
I do spend very significant time on that site. Since I largely ceased my activity on StackOverflow it has become my number one SE site I visit everyday. I usually enjoy its questions and answers very much and care for the overall well-being of that site to a large degree.
The reasons I prefer it over this site are on the one hand grounded in the fact that I'm not much of an avid reader and not so much into science-fiction or fantasy alone but into movies and TV in general. Besides that I'm usually not so much concerned about secondary "canon" or the finer intricacies of the surrounding universe in general but rather about the primary cinematic material, its story and motifs. I just don't care that much about questions like "Has there ever been a mention of Picard listening to the Beatles in Star Trek canon?" or "What would happen if a mud-blood apparates directly into the Ministry of Magic's council chamber?".
But since those two sites have inherently different approaches to questions and answers, as a natural consequence of being different SE sites with inherently different scopes and underlying philosophies, it would seem rather futile to reason about the quality of that site's questions and answers by employing the standards and viewpoints of a completely different site. For them and their approach many of the questions/answers seem perfectly fit and high-quality, even if there are naturally of course also many low-quality questions/answers as on any other SE site (especially since they seem to have quite a big problem with identification questions).
Because of those content/scope/philosophy-wise differences, my years-long dedication to that other site and my contribution to its community and site history, I feel much more at home there and would ask every question first and foremost there, except if it was solely about written material (which I rarely have a question about, though).
I tend to read a lot over there. Funnily enough, I look for the SF&F related posts.
Sometimes when I see a question I'm interested in, and can answer, I do. But for the most part I'm more of a user than a contributor.
I've found that they get a lot of traffic as well as a lot of broad genres, which is actually quite fun to see, although I do get a little bit jealous of their popularity.
I've found some tremendously good users there, some of which have become moderators and are doing an excellent job. Their posts are really fun to read as well as informative.
The site and the posts are quite neat for the most part, and that seems to be mainly due to the excellent moderation (both elected and high-rep users).
Having said all of that, I'm more than happy to camp right here where I'm at. This is where I started. This is where I belong. This' where my peeps at!
I spend little time there, mostly because I simply have filled my SE participation well above my capacity as it is. If I had unlimited time, I would spend more time on M&TV.
Some of the reasons that site doesn't bubble up to take a bigger share in my SE diet:
Unlike SFF.SE, there appears to be no (or very little) premium on canon-based answers. Speculations - as far as plot details - seem to be just as valued. At least from my small experience.
UPDATE
And, if someone who enjoys the somewhat-rigorous approach SFF.SE tries to take to our content, here's a clearest reason to avoid Movies&TV:
How did the Resistance know their planet was the next target?
Well-writen, canon-based answer with quotes and citatoins. Basically, the kind that in my experience would get 10 upvotes in a couple of days on SFF.
Score: -1 DV, 0 UV (now -2/+4)
A completely random guess with a flashy, offtopic picture, and which is 100% incorrect based on canon.
Score: 3 UV (now -2/+4, same as mine, if you ignore my own DV).
Note the delta 1/3/2016: since I posted this 12/27, the 100% wrong answer garnered 1 more upvote, and mine 1 more downvote. NOT encouraging at all (I'm thankful about 4 upvotes on mine, but that's rather irrelevant - the upvotes on incorrect answer - or downvotes on correct answer - is what bothers me)
SFF genres construe a vast majority of my M&TV consumption. Since most of my interest is on in-universe content (as opposed to production details), SFF.SE is a better location to both obtain relevant answers, and to show off err.... rep-x0re errr... provide valuable assistance to information seekers on these topics.
Non-SFF content in general seems to produce less of "Oh! I want to mentally engage with in-universe details" impetus for me, even for the smaller share of my entertainment that is non-SFF. It's a genre specific thing, I suspect - the whole point of SFF is largely world-building.
I have an account, but I don't spend much time there. shrug Honestly, it's largely that my itch is well enough scratched here.
I've got accounts on both sites, but to be frank I prefer this site. A few disclaimers though:
All that said, in my limited experience, I have found this site to be more active than Movies & TV.SE, at least in the areas I'm interested in (specifically Star Trek). I've also found that generally (and I can't stress this enough) that the quality of answers on this site is higher than on Movies & TV.SE No disrespect to that community and there are some fabulous answers there, but I've found that there does tend to be a greater reliance on wikis over there than there is here and, well, we all know what an unsourced wiki can be like!
So, I spend way more time on this site than I do TV & Movies, so I might be ignorant to a lot of matters, but those are just my experiences!
I didn't know there was a movie.se so no, I don't spend any time over there at all.
Quite frankly I find Movies.SE not that great due to the large volume of "noise". Besides the overabundance of "identify this" questions -- at this moment about half of the questions on their homepage -- it often features inane questions. Not just ones that can be solved by looking at a wiki page ("What does Leonard Hofstadter do at Caltech?"), but also obvious ones like:
I spend some time there, but definitely not an amount that could be described as "significant". The major reasons are:
It's a lot less active compared to the other sites in the network I visit. For a site that's been out of beta long enough to have custom CSS, it really doesn't seem to get that much traffic. I honestly feel like checking once every couple of days is sufficient to see everything worthwhile they have to offer.
The question quality seems to be a lot lower than SF&F. Not necessarily in terms of the writing, but just what's asked about. They tend to attract a lot of poor quality identification questions, and while they have good criteria for those questions and seem to close the bad ones, they still tend to hang around. There's also just a lot of question I'd personally consider dumb and not necessarily worth having around.
I can't downvote. I have essentially no way to indicate that I think a question is poor quality, but not outside the scope of the site, and that's actually pretty demotivating since I'm so used to having that ability here.
A lot of the questions just aren't interesting to me.
There's a big overlap between their site and ours, and the questions that might be of interest to me over there have generally already been covered on our site (and, in my opinion, usually to a much higher standard).
I do not spend time at M&TV.
Regarding movies, I don't see films in the theaters, so by the time I get around to watching a movie on Netflix or BD, discussion has typically died down -- I would have to have a really good reason for resurrecting an old thread; it couldn't be just to chat about the movie a bit.
I only watch a handful of shows regularly: the Harry Potter films, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, NCIS, the Law and Order franchises, and Psych. Accordingly, I don't feel I would have much to contribute to discussion at M&TV.
I'm only really interested in sci-fi films so this site is ideal for me. I'm only aware of Movies.se as a place to migrate off-topic questions.
