When I take a look at the available SE domains, I see some very particular and very specialized ones. There are domains which doesn't need to exist because there is already a super domain for it which encapsulates that topic.

For example, the domain for Poker. It has a very low number of questions asked in. The questions related to Poker could be asked in the domain for Games. Same for the domain for Role-playing games. Why don't they make a general domain for "Games"; so that, one would like ask something about Poker may label his question with "poker", and one would like to ask something related to RPG may label his question with "role-playing-game".

I don't know much about Poker, but, how many questions can someone ask about Poker? In my opinion, some topics was really not needed to exist. There are tons of topics out there that should have a SE domain. For example, there could be a domain for movies and other TV shows. Why do they open a domain for Latex instead of covering other most general ones first?

How do SE owners decide to create new domains? What logic do they use? Why do they decide to open a small domain like "Homebrewing"?

EDIT: I saw that there was already a domain for Movies and TV, sorry about that. But this doesn't change my question. Please take my question in a general sense, the domain names I used in my question are only examples.

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There's a site for this –  TylerShads Apr 23 '12 at 18:40
Whether you think they should exist or not, you should check out Area 51. It's all based on community desire--not TPTB making unilateral decisions. –  simchona Apr 23 '12 at 18:43
I think, this was a valid question. I don't think that I deserved this much of down votes. I asked, because I didn't know there was a discussion portal for this matter. The down voters could just kindly answer my question. –  hkBattousai Apr 23 '12 at 19:00
The downvotes are probably due to your opinions on the Poker site; that particular issue was discussed fairly thoroughly as I recall, and you are distracting from your actual question (what is the process) by pre-emptively questioning the process. Downvotes on Meta often mean disagreement. –  Matthew Read Apr 23 '12 at 19:03
@hkBattousai please see the FAQs of meta.stackoverflow.com to find out how voting works on this site –  MozenRath Apr 23 '12 at 20:28
possible duplicate of What is Area 51? –  kiamlaluno Apr 23 '12 at 20:30
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1 Answer

up vote 5 down vote accepted

SE doesn't pick what sites to have, the community does!

Area51 is SE's site proposal page. Anybody with an account can propose a site topic. Proposals then go through 3 stages:

  1. Definition - This is where people from the community "follow" the topic, to say they would be interested.
  2. Commitment - In this stage, people "commit" to use the site and keep it healthy. Only these commitees can use the site during Private Beta.
  3. Public Beta - Anybody can now use the site! The site only graduates to a full fledged site after SE sees that the site had a healthy beta.

Note: Any site that is a duplicate, can be housed into another site (with good reason), or is just plain stupid and nonconstructive is subject to be closed by those who have the power to do so.

And this is how we get our sites!

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This isn't quite true -- bad proposals will be closed by the team, regardless of popularity, and I'm sure they reserve the right not to launch every good proposal that gets to the end of the Commitment stage. –  Matthew Read Apr 23 '12 at 19:05
@MatthewRead: Yeah I guess I forgot to mention that... added it. –  Dynamic Apr 23 '12 at 19:06
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