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I noticed this question posted to this site asking for books for beginning learners. This type of resource request seems to be too open-ended and subjective for a stack exchange site, where specific questions and objective answers are desired.

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  • Has this been decided upon? I noticed my question linked in the accepted answer is still open. And would the recent questions about "resources to recommend to beginners" and "free audiobooks" be also considered open-ended resource questions? They seem to generate plenty of "and there's also..." type of answers.
    – kristan Mod
    Commented Sep 28, 2016 at 22:21

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The strength of Stack Exchange sites over a mere forum is that they offer expert answers to specific questions, which other experts can rate, giving a clear idea of which the best answers are.

I would argue that such open ended questions as the one you have quoted (see also: this question about learning other languages by means of Esperanto go against this, invite infinite "Oh, and there's also" comments or answers, which make a nonsense of voting and dilute the value of the Stack Exchange approach.

Such questions belong much better on a general forum like that of lernu.net, where people can add their suggestions at their leisure with no need to determine the "best" answer.

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    Exactly, Stack Exchange is for questions with a definitive answer, not open-ended questions or primary-opinion questions.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 20:19
  • I assumed my question was okay because there were similar questions on Language Learning and I thought it would be more suitable here than there. But looking at the questions there, I do realize that they tend to be more specific, so one could possibly evaluate which of given answers are more useful than others. Whereas with a question like mine, you couldn't really do that, since if one resource is for learning one language and one is for another, you can't really say one is more useful than the other. I therefore stand corrected, and will take my question to lernu.net
    – kristan
    Commented Aug 29, 2016 at 4:51
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I agree with you and changed the question to ask for an already existing list/resource instead.

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Other stackexchange sites have so-called "comunity wiki"s for open-ended questions (for an example, see this question on the TeX/LaTeX sitehttp://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11/what-are-good-learning-resources-for-a-latex-beginner) , and I have no problem in admitting them here, too.

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    No, Community Wiki is not used to make acceptable an open-ended question. The question must be fine without being CW, as any other question.
    – avpaderno Mod
    Commented Aug 26, 2016 at 20:17

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