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From the close dialog:

Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.

However, this is never explicitly explained in the Help section, as far as I can tell. I think it would be good if it were.

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All of the site-specific close reasons are now stated in the "What can I ask about here?" portion of the Help Center.

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    This is good, Robert, but the reasons still should be in the Help Center. – jscs Sep 18 '13 at 20:04
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    @RobertHarvey: Because everything a user should know needs to be in the help center. It's expected that if a user reads it whole (yeah right), he'll be able to blend right in, without having a single question downvoted or closed. A user does not need to go read a meta thread to realize what's going on on the site. – Madara's Ghost Sep 18 '13 at 20:09
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    @RobertHarvey Because if the new users, at whom the text is directed, even bother to read it, they will only read what is on the page. They certainly won't click every link to find every contingency. And since this fishing reason is frequent enough to be in the flagging- and (presumably) closing-dialog, it should be mentioned in the Help Center. Basically, I think that the help center should reflect the default options in the flagging/closing dialogs, especially since it reflects the structure enough to give the impression of being complete. – user213634 Sep 18 '13 at 20:09
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    @RobertHarvey As I also mention in my question, the same goes for actually defining flagging. The help center says To prevent your question from being flagged, yet it is really difficult to find out what flagging actually is. – user213634 Sep 18 '13 at 20:11
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    @AndersUP: You'll have to ask SE about that one. The only section I am able to edit as a mod is "What types of questions can I ask here?" – user102937 Sep 18 '13 at 20:21
  • I did not find the reason before at all, and neither did the person mailing me personally complaining that his question had been closed by the evil newbie hating cabal. :-) Now it's clearly stated, and no misunderstanding is possible. Thanks! – Lennart Regebro Sep 18 '13 at 20:21
  • @RobertHarvey I have that one in my question - and I have now clarified it to reflect that I think "flagged" should link to "closed questions" just as "deleted" currently links to "deleted questions" in the help section. Can/should I do more to ask SE? – user213634 Sep 18 '13 at 20:24
  • Have you read this yet? This section actually talks about something else (subjective questions), and flagging can be spoken about in the generic sense there (it's not like the user needs to know everything about flagging to understand that such questions are probably not welcome). – user102937 Sep 18 '13 at 20:25
  • Thanks for editing the info into the HC. (Would make more sense if you were permitted to put it on /dont-ask, but at least it's there now.) – jscs Sep 18 '13 at 20:29
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    @RobertHarvey It is exactly the link in stackoverflow.com/help/dont-ask I suggest is improved to have both closing and deleting. – user213634 Sep 18 '13 at 20:30
  • @AndersUP: Well, your feature request is still up. We'll see what happens. – user102937 Sep 18 '13 at 20:37
  • @AndersUP: I don't see "may already have an answer here" in your question, or any of the comments. – user102937 Sep 18 '13 at 20:40
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    @AndersUP: You're the only one seeing that (by design). – user102937 Sep 18 '13 at 20:43

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