Re: What are good sources for streaming Japanese language television?
I originally assumed that the site was centered on the Japanese Language and would include resources for learning the language as well as specific questions about the language, but a few people voted to close the referenced question.
Does the scope of the site include resource for learning the language?
Depending upon how the open beta goes, most of the people that come to this site will likely be students of various skill levels, as such, I am all for allowing well formed questions about learning resources. That said though, I would consider a question about dictionaries, techniques (since Japanese requires you to learn three different writing systems, is a bit different than Latin languages), and classes to be on topic while general questions about more entertainment based topics to be off-topic.
We should be careful though, if we are extremely narrow about what is on and off topic we could quickly exclude most student questions and I would argue that this is inherently a "student oriented" site in that the primary language is not Japanese.
The more fundamental problem with resource questions is that most of the ones asked so far are not answerable.
If someone asks "Is there a furigana japanese-english dictionary with example sentences and tonal annotations?" We can answer that with "Yes, here's one... [amazon.co.jp link to gg]". Later on, that answer will come up on a search for "dictionary furigana tones" (hopefully). I believe that this specifically (and verifiably) answerable question would be a useful part of the site.
"Collective knowledge" questions like "What is the best ja-en dictionary?" are useless. They clutter up the site with popularity contests. Very few of the questions are even going to include their criterion for "best".
If you take a look through the the discussions we had about on/off topic questions when we were kicking the site around Area 51, we ended up deciding that the site should have expert questions about the language itself rather than language learning resources.
The problems with questions like 'What is the best resource for X':
So I'm pretty secure in my belief that keeping the site about Japanese is the way to go. I'd be willing to hear well-formed arguments from people who think otherwise though.
Foremost, let me come clean: my company develops Japanese language vocabulary study iOS software. I have every personal reason to gain from such a popularity contest.
That out in the open, I agree with jkerian's point that such questions aren't good for the community.
In my own experience, I made software because I wasn't happy with the other options - they all had something wrong with them (by my criteria). Interestingly, when I went around to various forums and websites to introduce/promote my product, I was met with (in many cases), "We're not interested, we use X for that" (X = usually one of the products I had felt wasn't up to the job). People -- particularly online -- seem to become very defensive of whatever they personally used as a tool, and without good objective criteria, it is very hard to address that.
Language learning is a constantly evolving science (nay, art?). By allowing such questions, you'll end up with a few "super questions" that receive many votes, becoming highly SEO'ed, and draw a lot of traffic. And the "winners" of that post -- even 2 years from now -- will continue to receive business, even if their product isn't indeed the best.
In short, the answer to something like "why can't men say わ at the end of a sentence" is pretty much timeless, whereas a better dictionary or piece of software may come out in a year -- so unless those questions come with a time expiry (not build into the stack exchange sites as I understand), it's not a good idea for innovation.
It was kind of hinted in the comments throughout this question, but I think we should start looking at some kind of community wiki question on the main site that showcases a bunch of language references. I've seen several dictionary questions so far this week, and it'd be nice to have a consolidated list that they can all just point to.
I know arguably those questions are off-topic for the site, but considering a large number of the people asking questions are trying to learn the language, it seems like it would benefit them if there was some group of resources we can point them towards. Especially since the number of questions asking about dictionaries/other material will only keep growing once the site goes public.
Making them community wiki should also remove any concerns about reputation, since I believe you don't earn reputation from a wiki question.
Excuse me for bumping the old meta discussion, but I think that this is a problem which has to be addressed.
As jkerian observed, there were many bad questions asking for external resource, but the reason they were bad is not because they asked for external resource but because they asked for tastes without specifying clear criteria for good answers.
In my opinion, whether a question asks for external resource or not is simply irrelevant to whether it is on topic or off topic. “What is a good website to learn Japanese speech?” would be a bad question on Stack Exchange because it is unclear what the asker means by “good,” exactly for the same reason why “What is a good way to learn kanji characters?” or “What is a good way to introduce oneself in Japanese?” would be bad. Questions have to be specific instead of just saying “good.” As long as criteria are clear, questions about the Japanese language should be fine, whether they ask for external resource or not.
(Probably I am supposed to post a comment like this as a response to a more recent “Scope amendment: Should questions about Resources be allowed on JLU?” but it requires us to read all the linked questions before voting, which I am not happy to do.)
