About that "link to studies" question

I recently closed a question called Studies on media failure rates. I'd like to elaborate on exactly why these types of questions are closed for being unusually broad.

Please contribute! Links to studies on tape and DVD/Bluray media are especially welcome…

Stack Exchange is not a search engine or a collection of links. We're here to provide definitive answers to questions about digital preservation, not questions about where to find things on the Internet.

If the question stood, the "perfect answer" would just link to another site. I appreciate the effort, but there are two problems with this:

  1. It's not a real question. It doesn't reflect an actual problem that someone is searching for. All we've done is set up another stumbling block to folks looking for that information… elsewhere.
  2. Catch-all questions will displace a lot of good, specific questions that will be closed as a duplicate; "This has already been answered [here]" — except it hasn't.

Remember that search is the lifeblood of this site — and if someone is searching for the "failure rate of CD-RWs", I sure would like them to find this site. But overly generic questions do not help curate the type of detailed answers where this site should excel — specific, long-tailed questions with intriguing answers — questions that will attract and hold the interest of the experts we are trying to appeal to.

Robert Cartaino

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