About learning resources. Why was this question closed?

Question

I'm not familiar with the rules of this site. I'm rather active in other SE-sites. This question was closed and the given reason was that the OP was asking for learning resources. Lots of questions in the beginning of the site scored high: they were the canonical questions everybody poses. But now, a question with +9 votes is rather an exception. If the respective answer scored +12, it means that it's very useful. It is suspicious to me, that after half a year a question with those characteristics was closed.

Why was it actually closed?

• First, it is not a learning resource.

• Isn't asking for an alternative to a dictionary which every native speaker knows and uses, but whose interface doesn't work, allowed?

• Why is asking for resources forbidden? In case it is there are always evolving rules. When a new site appears, we do not know everything and therefore we cannot deduce the most perfect rules and letting them be totally fixed doesn't work: that's why the meta does exist, I guess.

• If those rules of closing questions do apply, why was this question closed 6 months later?

Answer 1

I will address each of your points separately.

1. First, it is not a learning resource.

   Well, that's a matter of definition. To some extent, a dictionary is a learning resource--all dictionaries exist to allow people to learn about the meanings of words. But this is really a secondary issue to the closing of the question.

2. Isn't asking for an alternative to a dictionary which every native speaker knows and uses, but whose interface doesn't work, allowed?

   This type of question does not make for a good fit for StackExchange, because there are theoretically an unlimited number of correct answers. The Q&A format, especially as implemented on the StackExchange network, is designed to cater to questions where a correct answer can be selected. There are some grey areas, but it has been long decided that resource questions of this sort fall outside the scope of the site.

3. Why is asking for resources forbidden?

   For the reasons explained in point #2 above, these sorts of questions rarely have a "correct answer." You will notice that every single answer on your question is equally correct, from a technical stand point.

   They also lend themselves to opinion-based answers ("My favorite resource of this type is...") and voting wars.

4. If those rules of closing questions do apply, why was this question closed 6 months later?

   Often low-quality or borderline questions slip by undetected for some time. It's also common that community standards change over time. This is especially true for sites in beta, like this one.

   It's quite common to see highly voted questions which were asked early in the beta process to be closed months or even years later. This happens all the time even on StackOverflow, as the community has come to learn better the scope of questions that make the site thrive.

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Bottom line: I don't think your question was a bad question, but it's not the objective sort of question which leads to high-quality answers on our site. What is "user-unfriendly" is not even an objective term. What you may find user-unfriendly may be incredibly easy for someone else to use. So even from the title, the question was rather subjective in nature.