Should "list of words" questions be discouraged?

Question

For example, these questions:

• Common 四{よ}字{じ}熟{じゅく}語{ご} that use/are 当{あ}て字{じ}
• Which verbs have 辞書形 (dictionary forms) that look like ~ます conjugations?

And these to a lesser extent:

• 外来語 (gairaigo) replaced by Japanese word?
• Are there any old loanwords from Korean, especially any not written in katakana?

From the FAQ: "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." Questions of the form "Here are some examples of words that have [this property], what are some others?" can be hard to answer definitively. To a lesser extent, "Are there any words that have [this property]?" can also be hard to answer if the poster is looking for all such words instead of just a few examples.

Some of the other SE sites prohibit these kinds of questions; what should we do?

Answer 1

I faced this issue in the English StackExchange site.

My proposal is to make them community wiki. I'll try to explain why:

Since some of these questions are very useful, we can't simply delete them, but the problem of "equally acceptable" answers remains, not to mention that people will be encouraged to post an answer just to receive reputation.

So the solution is CW. If we make a question "community wiki", we'll have these advantages:

• People will post only if they really have good info to add, but they won't earn reputation, since every answer can be "correct";
• For the same reason of the answers being equally acceptable, the OP won't need to choose one if they are made community wiki.
• Making them CW, will save the question, not closing it or deleting it, making that info available for future users and visitors.

Answer 2

In my opinion, it is not appropriate to ask for as many words satisfying some criteria as possible. On the other hand, asking for a few examples should be fine.

Therefore, my proposal is to interpret the questions asking for a list of words satisfying some criteria as asking for a few examples instead of an exhaustive list, possibly leaving a comment stating so.

Answer 3

As a regular of a Stack Exchange site that's had a lot of “list of X” questions, I'll put a word in. I haven't really thought about how applicable this is for JL&U.

The problem with “list of X” questions is that they tend to attract answers with one suggestion each. The end result is that answers are ranked by age (older questions got more votes) and popularity. The reader gets no clue as to the relative importance of answers, or when one answer is better than another.

I've found that a useful criterion for list-type questions is the kinds of answers they attract:

1. Just one example: bad.
2. A few examples, chosen to be significant, plus a link or two to comprehensive lists, or a method to look for more examples: good.

To some extent, it's possible to allow list questions if you can get enough answers of type 2 and systematically delete answers of type 1. Whether that works depends on how dedicated the community is to making these questions work.