I recently asked a question on ell.SE requesting resources, which was subsequently moved to the meta, and to which I quickly found a satisfactory answer, namely I discovered Resources for learning English.
I suggest to include this link into the right-hand panel "Helpful links" found on the Ask a question page.
I think this is a good idea from the user experience perspective.
Requests for literature or other resources are legit questions on many other StackExchange sites (if asked in good faith and after a reasonable effort), while here on ELL such questions should be asked on Meta. Users like me may on occasion overlook or forget this difference, because it is impracticable to remember all the rules on every site or to read them every time before asking a question. Placing "Resources for learning English" link on the "Ask a question" page would draw attention to this difference.
Currently a user has to navigate through several pages in order to have a chance to learn that such questions should be asked on Meta:
- On Ask a Question page, click "How to ask a good question".
- On How do I ask a good question? page, click "can view in the help center".
- On What topics can I ask about here? page, scroll to the last item of the 3rd list to learn that resource requests belong on Meta
- Finally, Resources for learning English.
I have already bookmarked that page in my browser, so I personally have no trouble finding it when I need. But other users (new and old) and moderators would benefit from better visibility and discoverability of the list of useful resources. I don't know what moderator workload is, but I imagine my suggestion would not only reduce the number of off-topic resource requests, but also the number of low-quality questions that would require intervention for other reasons.
