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Why was this question closed as off-topic?

It was tagged training and when you look at the definition of the tag training:

You may use this tag when your question revolves around for example: Where can I find materials to train for ... ? Asking which training course is best for you is off topic or not constructive at best as the answers will be equally valid and only apply to you.

you can see that my question is on-topic and wasn't asking for the "best" thing for me.

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  • related discussion at MSO: screencast and training tags on Stackoverflow and Programmers
    – gnat
    Apr 23, 2012 at 18:32
  • @gnat As a closing person, you could tell why do you think that it's off-topic or was it only intuition?
    – xralf
    Apr 23, 2012 at 18:37
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    actually I've been thinking between off-topic and not constructive - still am not sure which one fits better. Off-topic for "using effectively the tools like an editor..." (specific tools are for SO), not constructive for shopping
    – gnat
    Apr 23, 2012 at 18:45
  • @gnat OK, I tried to avoid shopping to ask for only the main site (and tag definition enables this) and I asked first on SO where it was heavy downvoted and deleted. I'm satisfied with the accepted answer, but nobody can write comments to this question and that's not good.
    – xralf
    Apr 23, 2012 at 18:54
  • Crafting questions on SE is an art in itself. I'm surprised they haven't sold a book about it on Amazon, because it could fill a 300 page book!
    – Damien
    Apr 24, 2012 at 17:36
  • @Zenph Asking questions on SE is a subset of asking questions. There are a few articles about asking questions on the Internet. I believe that a book about special SE restrictions could be created from posts on meta sites.
    – xralf
    Apr 24, 2012 at 18:59
  • @xralf..book has a variable length. Please be more specific. How many pages? How big is the print? How many words? That should settle things? Anal enough?
    – Damien
    Apr 24, 2012 at 19:03

1 Answer 1

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Even though the tag wiki says that you can use this tag for asking where to find resources, I don't think that's valid. Stack Exchange sites are not search engines. What you are asking for is simply asking for external resources - the best place to do that is in the search bar of your favorite search engine.

It also sounds like you're asking for a list of things. Stack Exchange sites are also not for generating lists of things.

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    Search engines aren't so good yet, to be able to answer such complicated query, so human knowledge makes better job here.
    – xralf
    Apr 24, 2012 at 12:45
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    @xralf That doesn't change the fact that Stack Exchange sites are not the place for asking for resources or generating lists of things.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:16
  • This is in contradiction with the training tag definition and I believe that before this purist movement the sense of the tag training was exactly such. I think that asking for one particular resource is useful for the community and it's not so difficult to ignore such questions for members who hate it.
    – xralf
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:23
  • And according to the points, you can see that many members welcome question asking for particular resource.
    – xralf
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:25
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    @xralf I'm not sure of the confusion. The definition of the training tag is incorrect and against the general rules of Stack Exchange. The number of up votes on a question don't matter. This question doesn't abide by the rules for a good question, therefore it gets closed.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:32
  • I added this explanation to the tag definition.
    – xralf
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:45
  • The question seems to be asking if such a resource exists instead of a list of resources. I've edited the question a bit to clarify that, so perhaps we can consider reopening it?
    – Rachel
    Apr 24, 2012 at 13:57
  • @Rachel How is that different? It's still asking for a resource, not asking a question. The best tool to address the concern is still a search engine, not asking other people.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Apr 24, 2012 at 16:53
  • @ThomasOwens It's asking if something exists or not. Sometimes it's hard to get the search engine to give you the links you're looking for, particularly if you don't know the right keywords to use. Asking a group of software developers if something exists or not is a much more efficient and accurate than of just assuming the search engine isn't giving you results because there are none.
    – Rachel
    Apr 24, 2012 at 17:12
  • @Rachel And there are avenues for that. Chat comes to mind. Asking a question isn't the place.
    – Thomas Owens Mod
    Apr 24, 2012 at 17:16

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