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I just posted this question: Is there any website where I can speak online to volunteers to practice my English pronunciation?

It's rather a trial question (I don't really need the answer). The question here is: are such questions asking for resources on-topic?

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I think such questions can be on topic. It would be important to scope the question reasonably. Your question seems great. On the other hand I would not want to see a question like "what are some English resources online".

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    I agree: if you expect up to five answers, that's fine. If the list will go on for pages, it's on-topic, but not constructive!
    – SF.
    Jan 23, 2013 at 22:53
  • I would think we should aim for one good answer that contains the list of resources answering the particular question. It would be a good use for Community Wiki.
    – MetaEd
    Jan 23, 2013 at 22:57
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    I think that good Wiki posts would come in handy in such scenarios instead of individual posts, which can be kept updated by moderators by merging posts or answers.
    – Mohit
    Jan 24, 2013 at 6:50
  • And maybe with a new "Asking for resources" tag too. Dec 15, 2014 at 15:48
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Topics of this sort may not make for very good Questions, but the Answers are invaluable. Annotated bibliographies and book reviews are fundamental to every academic discipline. A thoughtful post by someone whose opinions I've come to trust about the strengths and weaknesses of this dictionary or that corpus or the other research technique would be very helpful to me.

By all means, make it Community Wiki, if that's the best way round the formal constraints; but please, make it available.

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I hope they are allowed, but if they aren't, then we should consider allowing them on the meta site, like Japanese Language & Usage does.

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The attitude on other SE sites is that those questions are tolerated (but not encouraged), but they should be Community Wiki and might eventually get closed.

In English.SE we have e.g. What are your favorite English language tools? (closed) and in German.SE we have e.g. What movies are good for learners who want to improve their grammar and vocabulary?.

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Questions asking for a List Of Things should not be allowed. Link rot will make all answers useless over time.

The best place for a collection of URLs is the tag wiki for the best fitting tag.

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They are fine for the most part, as long as they are objective. There must be a definite answer. Using best or good is bad. Asking is something available, though is typically alright. However that is the precedent set by other sites, and our users votes will set a precedent for this site.

From the Stack Overflow FAQ:

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where … every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?” your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?” 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?” it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”

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The main problem with those type of questions is that the answers should be kept updated: There are new resources that are available, and old resources that are not available anymore.

Rather than asking which resources are available, it would be better to ask a more direct question.

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The number of possible questions of this type (that are topical for this site), yet substantially distinct from each other, is small.

When they have all been asked, the others can be regarded as duplicates, rather than off topic.

Pretty much a single question about all external web resources for learning English will cover most of the ground. It can be enshrined as a "Community Wiki" item.

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  • The question described in your final paragraph already exists here, although it needs a lot of work.
    – user230
    Dec 7, 2013 at 18:12

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