How to know site policies not explicitly addressed in the FAQ?

Question

Originally I requested reading recommendations, which was subsequently closed because it did not fit Stack Overflow's Q&A format.

Next, I asked how to request a reading recommendation which was thoroughly berated.

The topic of book recommendations was not discussed in the FAQ. In fact, the only mention of books is that 'answers should not require book' [referring to the breadth and depth of an answer]. Nearly half of the earlier requests for book recommendations are unmolested. In addition, its apparently OK to request software recommendations, which seems equally subjective.

Why is the policy on book recommendations not clearly stated in the FAQ? Why are software recommendations OK, but book recommendations off topic? Why are some of the requests for a book OK, and others not?

Answer 1

Why is the policy on book recommendations not clearly stated in the FAQ?

Because it has nothing to do with books... It's about shopping:

What’s the point of a bunch of labor intensive questions that provide only temporary benefit to a limited (some might say Too Localized) audience?

Read that blog post - it's focused on a particularly troublesome sort of shopping question that plagued Super User, but many of the same concepts apply - in particular, how you can get what you want:

when it comes to shopping questions, don’t ask us what you should buy — ask us what you need to learn to tell what you should buy.

As for why this isn't mentioned in the FAQ... It is. It's part of a much, much larger set of "poll" questions, addressed in the section titled "What kind of questions should I not ask here?":

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

• every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”

Very, very few people ever read every book on a topic. There are a lot of books out there. So if all you ask for is the name of a book, unless your topic is exceedingly narrow you'll likely just get suggestions and votes for whatever books are most often read. You could pull a list off Amazon and sort by popularity, and it'd be just as useful (not very).

What you really want are experts who could teach you all you need to know without a book to step in, give you an overview, and then point to a book that'll take you the rest of the way. So instead of having to come up with everything you want (from a position of ignorance no less!) before asking, you're able to ask first "what do I need to know" and then "and how can I learn it?"

Answer 2

To answer your meta-question, nobody expects you to know, on first arrival, exactly what is on and off topic on SO. That's why we have community moderation. When the community, who as a whole usually knows what's allowed and what's not, sees something that doesn't belong, it closes it. No harm done. You haven't been banned, shamed, hurt, or penalized for not knowing the rules. Not in any way. Further, the faq are not so much rules as a "trailing indicator" of what the community and moderators are basing their decisions on. They aren't always up to date, but that's ok, because they aren't binding. If the faq failed to warn you that certain kinds of questions don't belong here, there's no harm done, the question will just be closed. Sometimes, the community can even determine a place your question does belong, and it is migrated there, and you discover a place of value to you.

What should you have done differently? Probably nothing. You didn't know if your question belonged or not, so you tried asking it. You learned it didn't belong. At first, you thought perhaps the faq was more binding than it is, so you asked for clarification on meta, which you got. Now you "get it" and you know that your question doesn't belong on SO or P.SE. You will have to learn the information you seek some other way. And, I repeat, there's no harm done. You're not expected to have expert knowledge: the community of folks with close votes has that for you. It's a service, to you and to other readers of the site. And it works.

Answer 3

It is stated in the FAQ.

We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …

• a specific programming problem
• a software algorithm
• software tools commonly used by programmers
• practical, answerable problems that are unique to the programming profession

Recommendations for books are not specific programming problems, software algorithms, software tools or practical answerable problems. They are subjective. We want questions that have a clearly defined answer.

Answer 4

Stack Overflow's FAQ states clearly that:

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. [...]

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where…

• every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?” [...]
• there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
• we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”

I've quoted the parts that applies to shopping and book recommendations. The 'canonical' discussion on why shopping advice is off topic appears on Gaming Meta - Handling game recommendations - how can we solve these two problems of quality?. It is an long standing issue, one that has been discussed to death.

You included a Google query there. Stack Overflow is old, and its policy to acceptable questions has changed (towards being more strict against subjective questions). Most of those are merely older questions which were never closed because the amount of manpower required for such a cleanup far outweights any benefit it brings. Citing examples of old, unclosed book recommendation questions do not help your case.