Scope amendment: Should questions about Resources be allowed on JLU?

Question

EDIT: It has been over a year since the "vote" has been counted and the vote total no longer has any useful meaning.

As noted in the comments, the vote total while the question was current was: Yes:7, No:6 . Assuming no one voted for both options, we had the participation of 13 members after a few weeks.

The rather dramatic change in vote totals since then has prompted the creation of a new discusison.

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This very question has already been asked: Can this site include questions about resources one would use to learn the Japanese Language?

Despite Rob's answer getting a majority of votes, it falls short of establishing clear guidelines for how Resources questions should be handled (for a start, it seems to answer in the positive, but then goes on excluding the very example given by the OP).

I feel this is a very important point, that will dramatically affect the content and tone of JLU and should be the object of clear, unambiguous consensus. A consensus that should be respected, once it has been established (yes, that means no longer closing these questions if the change is voted in).

Let's settle this once and for all.

Please have a look at all the examples below and cast a vote on whether these two sub-categories of questions should be allowed or not:

1) Resource-question that follow SE's format closely ("practical, answerable questions based on actual problems"):

Written resources for scientific and philosophic japanese?

Is there an online list of frequently used words in the news?

Free, online resource for kanbun readings of particular texts?

Children's audio books good for listening practice?

2) Resource questions that might not have a satisfying answer:

What should I look for in a dictionary to help me study?

What are good sources for streaming Japanese language television?

What techniques/resources do you use to learn Japanese?

What's the best utility for identifying kanji?

Appropiate anime or media to learn japanese

Feel free to add more examples, or revise them to make them clearer

Also feel free to amend the answer posts with your arguments for/against, but please abstain from splitting the answers beyond the 3 existing ones

Answer 1

YES, Resource questions are fine as long as they conform to SE's guiding principles (category 1 above): practical, answerable questions based on actual problems

Arguments in favor:

• We can encourage new learners and/or new users to ask honest questions about Japanese without being shut down, yet avoid becoming diluted with off-topic and open-ended questions.
• We do not have to blindly disregard useful questions and answers that could help the site grow.
• We can maintain the air of professionalism by still closing clearly unhelpful questions.

Argument against:

• This is going to be HARD. Consider whether you actually agree with my decisions on off-topic/on-topic in the examples below. If we move the boundary, there will be quite a bit more contention over anything that sound vaguely like a 'resource question'.

Here's the main rule from our FAQ on questions: "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face."

• Practical : The question has to have some point. A decent (though not foolproof) guide to this is "would this question ever help anyone else?"
• Answerable : Most resource-questions fail this. There should be an answer. Any rational person (not just the original person asking the question), should be able to come by and say "yes, this single answer answered the question". Virtually all "what's your favorite ___?" questions fail this.
• based on actual problems : Given that this is a language site, the usual "problem" is "I would like to express X", or "What does Y mean?". "I would like to learn to read kanji" may be signs of an underlying psychological problem, but the important thing to note is that the "problem" in this case is the person, not the language. The problem that you are trying to solve is the bit that we're arguing needs to be related to the language.

Here's our current FAQ sections on questions to avoid:

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

• every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?” (fails all 3)
• your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?” (actual problem?)
• there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.” (actual problem, practical... in my perfect world, these questions would all have one single-word response "Yes")
• we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?” (practical, actual problem)
• it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?” (fails all 3)

Now let's turn to some of the questions

1) "Answerable" resource questions:

Yes Written resources for scientific and philosophic japanese?

Practical: Yes, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: Yes ... Note that the title could be better

Yes Is there an online list of frequently used words in the news?

Practical: Yes, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: Yes

Yes Free, online resource for kanbun readings of particular texts?

Practical: Yes, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: Yes (problem is reading old japanese, language related)

Probably Yes Children's audio books good for listening practice?

Practical: Partly, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: Maybe. This one is similar to the "streaming japanese TV" question. "Actual Problem" is perhaps better because these resources are actually harder to find. Ironically, this question's most on-topic section is the resource question, the rest of it starts asking for generic recomendations.

2) Not "answerable" Resource questions:

No What should I look for in a dictionary to help me study?

Practical: Yes (but only on the surface), Answerable: No, Actual Problem: No

This one is a thinly disguised "What's your favorite _____ ?" question. It's not answerable in this case because the author made it so generic as to be absolutely useless. There is no actual problem here, unlike several of the other dictionary-related questions.

Probably No What are good sources for streaming Japanese language television?

Practical: Yes, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: Maybe. I have to say I'd be more sympathetic to this question if we were living in pre-youtube/nikoniko days, where finding Japanese tv programs was even remotely difficult. Given that we're not suffering from a lack of native-produced television program, it's hard to see where the "liveness" is an issue. How would you declare this to be on-topic, but exclude "Where can I find episode 14 of pokemon, season 3?"

No What techniques/resources do you use to learn Japanese?

Practical: Maybe, Answerable: Yes, Actual Problem: No. This might be our textbook example of “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”

No What's the best utility for identifying kanji?

Practical: No, Answerable: No, Actual Problem: No. Clearcut "What's your favorite ____?" question.

No Appropiate anime or media to learn japanese

Practical: No, Answerable: No, Actual Problem: No. I attempted to answer this question by reframing the question "What are the pitfalls of learning Japanese from anime?" which I believe partly redeems it, but the question itself is simply not a question.

Answer 2

YES, all resource questions should be allowed on JLU (examples from both categories above should be re-opened)

Some people feel that JLU should let such questions be.

Arguments in favour:

• A lot of JLU users are students of Japanese and would benefit from sharing tips for resources on learning Japanese.

• Many users would prefer to be able to make an effort to work out the answers to their questions themselves, without asking JLU. Partially for their own convenience, and partially because asking questions you can work out yourself is regarded as inconsiderate.

• Many of the people interested in resources are beginners. If they aren't allowed to ask such questions here, or on any other Stack Exchange, then they may leave the Stack Exchange network for other web forums. Even when they reach the stage of being able to ask questions that would be accepted here, they will probably stay with the web forums they have already used.

• These kinds of questions tend to be popular; they may be likely to bring in new users and increase traffic to the site.

Answer 3

NO, resource questions should not be allowed on JLU (examples from both categories above should remain closed and all future questions on similar topics, closed as well)

Seems to be the current "practical consensus" so far (in accordance to the initial scope proposal on Area51): Resources questions have been consistently voted closed by core members (even when admins are not around, they quickly reach their 5 closing votes).

Arguments in favour of disallowing all resource questions:

• They do not, usually, have a single decidable answer, making them unfit for SE's voting system and question guidelines. Any answer to questions about media, textbook or method is likely to be highly subjective and will not lead to any useful consensus.

• Countless other websites and forums exist that already discuss such resources.

• JLU Meta (and the chat) can already be used to discuss these (by creating single Community Wiki entries for each type of resources, for example), without compromising the scope of the Main site.

• JLU is not exclusively designed as a Japanese-studying website but a resource for discussing points of the Japanese language. Many of its core members are native or advanced speakers and have no use for the type of resources being discussed.

• The reputation system awards popular questions. Open-ended subjective questions tend to be popular because it's easy for everyone to share their opinion and gain reputation. JLU would risk encouraging and rewarding people for asking and answering resource questions at the expense of language questions.

• In the case of links to websites, some believe that answers on this site should be as self-contained as possible in order to reduce the associated risk of websites going down. There is also a risk that external resources may become out of date or out of print in the future.