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Comments on Are resource requests on-topic?

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Are resource requests on-topic?

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Should questions asking for resources be on-topic? I imagine questions of the form, "Resources for learning language X" or "Grammar reference for language X" or "Free online English-Language X dictionaries" and the like.

If they are to be on-topic, how should they be organised? One extreme would be separate resource requests for each language and resource type. The other would be to have one "question" for all resource requests, each answer would list resources for only one language, listing resources for all resource types.

(the idea of a "community-wiki" might be relevant)

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Yes, I think that they should be on-topic.

However, resource requests should be precise to avoid convoluted answers. So questions could be "What good free English-language dictionaries are there?", "Where can I find good grammar references for Spanish?", "What free websites are there to learn Chinese?" or "Are there translators for translating Swedish to Afrikaans?".

Language-learning is a really big topic and there are so many websites, translators, references and dictionaries available that putting everything in one question / answer for one language might lead to users who suddenly are perplexed as to where to start.

A community wiki might be indeed useful for this case as provided answers might change frequently. It might also be worthwhile to think about a learning category where article post types (as displayed on Judaism, Writing, Cooking and other sites) are used so that everything gets a little bit more "wiki-like".

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General comments (4 comments)
General comments
user53100‭ wrote over 4 years ago

I too agree with the idea of having a separate category for that. However, still having a Q&A format to questions in that category could be useful, as users would be able to vote on resources. What do you think?

Sigma‭ wrote over 4 years ago

We could use a resource tag as a way to distinguish these questions from regular Q&A. I'm not sure an entirely separate category is necessary; as time passes the wiki aspect will likely predominate and new questions will become rare.

Monica Cellio‭ wrote over 4 years ago

If you're thinking of this as answering resource-request questions, that sounds to me like it should be part of the general Q&A category. On the other hand, if you're thinking of cultivating a set of resources, an on-site library or wiki or something, that would make sense as a separate category, possibly with one place to collect requests for topics to be addressed.

user53100‭ wrote over 4 years ago

@MonicaCellio Such a "cultivation" matches closely to what I'm thinking too. Each language can have its own post/article containing the resources. Requests for new resource types can be in the form of comments to said post.