Let me preface this by saying two things:
Ignore the diamond attached below. My status as a glorified site-janitor has nothing to do with how seriously my opinion should be taken regarding this question.
The entire "Vote in Meta" was rather widely considered a mistake, both by the moderators(ours and others) and the community managers. The issue with the upvote becoming deceptive was predicted. Please don't just upvote answers in this topic... discuss them.
You might want to get coffee first, this could take a while.
In the time since the last meta-question addressing this was written, I've changed my mind on this issue. At one point I made tried to form the most convincing argument I could that resource questions could be an acceptable and valuable part of the site. At this point I oppose that position. There are a number of arguments for adding resource questions to the site, but I no longer find them convincing.
Claim: Adding resource questions to the site will make it more welcoming to new Japanese learners.
I do not believe this to be the case. New Japanese learners are most likely to need "a textbook with audio resources", "some video lessons", "some language software" and "a dictionary". They are most likely to ask resource questions that are generic and subjective, or otherwise unacceptable on the site for reasons unrelated to their categorization as 'shopping recommendations'. What will happen is that more experienced users who understand the nuances of stack-exchange rules will have their resource questions answered... and the contrast will feel even more unfriendly to new users than the current policy. After all they "just need to know where to start out".
Claim: Adding resource questions will massively increase the usefulness of the site.
Looking through the resource questions that we've allowed on both main and meta, most of them are incredibly specialized questions related to particular pieces of software. There are also several questions asking "Does anyone have an electronic form of list X?" Those that aren't in these two categories (or weren't subsumed by the resources list FAQ) are mostly unanswered.
Some fears about what this will do to the community are overblown.
Baseless Fear: JSE will become reddit's LearnJapanese sub/the Tae-Kim forum/the RTK forum/any random crappy Japanese forum if we allow resource questions.
The problem with most of those forums has more to do with not moderating against subjective questions/polls/"does anyone else think Naruto should just...", not the presence of resource questions. The Stack Exchange Q&A format doesn't work terribly well for subjective discussions (which is especially notable for meta questions like this... where we're trying to have a discussion), and me-too-isms are treated pretty harshly both by the automated tools and our moderators.
It is noticeable that entirely too many people are paying attention to "vote totals" in another thread. Apparently they haven't noticed 8 upvotes on an answer that said to throw out all other rules for resource questions. This option simply won't happen. The community won't let it happen, the site moderators wouldn't let it happen, the community team wouldn't let it happen... and even if it did happen, we would get a "this site is being closed down in 48 hours" notice from stack exchange within 6 months. So let's assume we're talking about either continuing the status-quo (no resource questions), or allowing them, subject to the usual standards of a good stack exchange question.
Baseless Fear: If we allow resource questions, many of our more experienced people will leave.
I actually heard this directly from several of our more advanced members last time this was brought up. Not to put too fine a point on it, but not a single one of those members have posted in the last 6 months. When you're issuing ultimatums based on a tricky decision that a community is trying to make, I'm not sure I'd count your participation as a factor in either direction.
Somewhat reasonable Fear: We'll be flooded with crappy resource questions.
This probably will happen a bit. I think that this will settle down after we close the most obvious problem questions. (Move the resources threadnaught to the main site and close basically every 'new learner resource' question as a dup of it) The more serious question however is...
Somewhat reasonable Fear: We will get embroiled in endless arguments over how narrowly scoped a resource question has to be to be acceptable.
What I would like to see from those who want to allow resource questions are very clear examples/rules of what would be allowed. To allow them, could we get substantial agreement about what the boundary is between allowed/disallowed.
We have basically decided on this site that even the most trivial questions (answerable with a Google "I'm feeling lucky"-click) are allowed on the site as long as they are on the subject of syntax, grammar, orthography, or almost anything else that would be covered in a Japanese language class at your average university. Would this extend to resource questions?
- "Does anyone know of a free online dictionary?"
- "Does anyone know of a free online dictionary that uses romaji?"
- "Does anyone know of a free online dictionary that uses romaji and has tonal annotations?"
- "Does anyone know of a free online dictionary that uses romaji, has tonal annotations, etymology and major works of literature that include rare words"
- "Does anyone know of a free online dictionary that uses romaji, has tonal annotations, etymology, major works of literature that include rare words, cross references with Chinese dictionary XYZ, runs in IE6, uses an obscure polish encoding, includes pronunciations, variations, masseuse-specialized vocabulary and a partridge in a pear tree?"
Look carefully at the questions that I thought would be on-topic/off-topic last time I thought about this question. Do you agree? Should they be made more specifically problem oriented/general-purpose or are they fine as they are?