Where does it say that resources are off-topic on main?

Question

It's been assumed that questions about resources are off-topic because they aren't questions about the language per se.

Here's an example:

• Main - I'm looking for a tool for comparing the meaning of synonyms

The following Meta.ELU question looks like a duplicate (of this Meta question), but it's not:

• Meta - Are questions about online resources on-topic?

That question asks whether questions about resources are on-topic, but I'm interested to know where a visitor would look to know that 'resource' questions are off-topic (if indeed they are). The accepted answer there recommends asking at Writers.SE, but the attempt to do so was apparently rebuffed.

The following Meta.ELU question also looks promising:

• Meta - Should questions about resources be asked on main or meta?

It was answered by a current mod (although he wasn't one at the time the answer was proffered), and offers the opinion that 'resource' questions are on topic. He prefers that they be asked on Main, but concedes that by the time he joined EL&U, the decision had already been made that 'resource' questions should be asked on Meta rather than Main. However, that answer doesn't indicate what standard documents (FAQ, for example) a visitor could browse to know that 'resource' questions are off-topic on Main.

Where in the documents accessible from the question-mark menu does it indicate that questions requesting resources are off-topic on Main.ELU or Meta.ELU?

It's no good pointing to a consensus on Meta.ELU because that would be like looking for a needle in a needle stack for new visitors. A consensus answer on Meta.SE would be even worse - the visitor might not even be aware of that particular needle stack.

Answer 1

The on-topic help page says what questions are welcome:

Questions on the following topics are welcomed here:

• Word choice and usage
• Grammar
• Etymology (history of words’ development)
• Dialect differences
• Pronunciation (phonetics and phonology, dialectology)
• Spelling and punctuation

That would indicate that questions for resources are not welcome. In fact, such questions are ephemeral because resources which might be available and suitable to answer one request may not cover the topic or even exist six months later.

An upvote for this answer would support a case for altering the Help page to explicitly direct resource requests to Meta. (Alternatively, write an answer here saying we shouldn't answer them at all, or provide some other solution.)

Resource requests will need management, and I would suggest that a question asking for a resource which compares the meaning of synonyms should be answered on a basic thesaurus question which could be a canonical target for duplicate questions.

Answer 2

Resource requests are "shopping list" questions, and are inherently unsuitable for all SE sites, not just EL&U. The reasons why are discussed on Meta and in a blog post by Jeff Atwood.

Summary from the linked answer:

• They are open-ended; there is never one perfect answer to them.
• They outdate incredibly quickly. This was what turned me against shopping list questions: if you look around on Stack Overflow, you will find plenty of 2010 "what's the best xyz" questions whose answers are hideously outdated now.
• They tend to attract a lot of spam and/or link only answers

It does make a lot of sense to me to maintain a list of resources that the community of experts for a site deems helpful for whatever the site topic is, but I think those sorts of questions are problematic on the main site.

Answer 3

Form the help centre's What types of questions should I avoid asking? page (I quoted only the relevant parts):

What types of questions should I avoid asking?

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

• every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”

The resource request seems to fall in that category. Indeed, every resource is an 'equally valid' answer.