Should we allow reference questions on main?

Question

We have two "reference requests" so far:

• Online Portuguese dictionary with IPA transcriptions
• Exemplos de corpora do português / Examples of corpora of Portuguese

Both questions were initially asked on main. The latter was closed/migrated by the community to meta. The former was closed (and later reopened for lack of clear consensus).

This has also been brought up here: About community wiki or protected questions used only for reference (usually breaking some site rules)

Good reference requests can be a very valuable resource and I think it's a good time to think about how we want to handle them. There are several options:

1. On main, just like questions (and tagged referência)
2. On main, but only as community wiki (i.e. no reputation)
3. On meta, as question
4. On meta, as community wiki (as collaborative project)

I think the difficulty lies in formulating a policy that allows any Good Reference Request®, and disallows bad reference requests (like "what's a good website to learn Portuguese").

The difficulty can also be circumvented by having a custom close reason (like "this is not a useful reference request") and closing any bad reference request as "bad, because I know a bad reference request when I see it"... but we would still need some guideline that tells us when to vote to close.

Anyway, I hope people will post some ideas. I'll post some of the models I'm familiar with from other SE sites.

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Temos duas perguntas sobre referências.

• Online Portuguese dictionary with IPA transcriptions
• Exemplos de corpora do português / Examples of corpora of Portuguese

As duas perguntas foram postadas no site principal. A segunda foi fechada/migrada pela comunidade para o meta. A primeira foi fechada (e reaberta por falta de consenso).

Pergunta relacionada: About community wiki or protected questions used only for reference (usually breaking some site rules)

Boas solicitações de referências podem ser fontes muito valiosas, e eu acho que seria um bom momento de se pensar em como lidaremos com esse tipo de pergunta. Temos várias opções:

1. No site principal e como pergunta normal (com a tag referência)
2. No site principal, mas como "community wiki" (sem ganhar reputação)
3. No meta, como pergunta
4. No meta, como "community wiki" (como um projeto colaborativo)

Eu acho que a dificuldade está em formular uma política que permita boas solicitações de referência, e desaprove solicitações ruins (como "what's a good website to learn Portuguese" — "que site é bom para aprender português").

Podemos contornar o problema com um motivo de fechamento personalizado (como "esta não é uma boa pergunta sobre referências"), e fechando solicitações ruins de referências... mas ainda assim precisaríamos de uma diretriz que nos diga quando votar para fechar.

De qualquer modo, espero que o pessoal poste algumas ideias. Eu vou apresentar alguns dos modelos que conheço de outras comunidades SE.

Answer 1

In my opinion the reference questions should be:

• On the main site;
• Community Wiki;
• And possibly locked.

Like this example in german.SE: Resources for learning German.

Community Wiki

References might not age well; we want the community to feel free to refresh them.

References might not be complete; we want the community to improve the answers, even if those improvements will change the original answer.
Conservative users (myself included) might hesitate in changing someone else's answer.

And if the edit is not consensual, it can always be rolled back.

Locked?

If they follow a particular format, they should be locked so no one breaks the format.
See the example I gave above: users adding new answers would break and corrupt the format.

If they don't follow a specific format, we probably would not want to lock them.

Main site

List is known by more than just power-users

If they are on meta, they will only be known to the power users.
No new or irregular user will ever find them.

Natural location

It's the natural place to ask, for new users or those not familiar with the StackExchange network's modus operandi.

New users will post reference questions on the main site even if they belong on meta; then they will be closed as off-topic, and someone will (hopefully) post a comment on their question, directing them to the meta post.
Posting them on the main site prevents this.

Affluence of interested users

These questions will show up on online searches of these resources.
Those interested in these resources are trying to improve their Portuguese, and that's (part of) our target audience. :)

Answer 2

In my point of view this type of questions should be in meta as CW because this questions are very difficult to maintain and can lose their quality quickly. Maybe one or two of these questions can be on main site but we can not make this the rule.

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No meu ponto de vista este tipo de perguntas devem estar no meta como CW porque estas questões são muito difíceis de manter e podem perder a sua qualidade rapidamente. Talvez uma ou duas destas perguntas pode estar no site principal, mas não podemos fazer disso a regra.