The Zombie Stack Exchanges That Just Won't Die
I see a consensus forming against scanner and resolution recommendation questions in "Is digitisation on topic?"
...questions focused on how to engage in digitisation, what types of scanners should be used or resolution to digitise at, will be off topic.^1^
"What's the best scanner to use" and "what DPI should I scan at" seem obviously out of scope...^2^
I know that SE has a contentious relationship with recommendation and "shopping" questions, usually supported by a lack of expert interest in giving recommendations and that recommendation-giving is subjective, which doesn't lead to creating definitive answers (a flag-able offense). I would like to confirm what kinds of recommendations are off-limits.
sean
Recommendation isn't the problem at all in this case. The reason these questions were flagged is that they sought advice on digitization, not digital preservation. Amazingly, even in the archival profession, digitization and digital preservation are often conflated.
As the Digital Preservation Coalition so concisely puts it:
"Digital Preservation Refers to the series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary."
While digital preservation ought to be a consideration in any digitization effort, these questions did not seem to be asked for the purpose of gaining knowledge that would support towards maintaining long term access to the digital objects – they simply seemed to seek best practices for digitization.
Another area declared that so-called "shopping" questions are off-limits, resulting in a ban on questions about what software would do a given task. This was enforced in spite of repeated protests, and a lot of people (including me) just quit that area. I don't want to see that happen here.