Resource requests are off-topic according to the help center
Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam.
However, some resource requests are tolerated on the site. Shog9 said the following in chat:
I see a lot of folks going after these "what's the canonical download for [tool|library]" posts as resource-requests. I think that's kinda short-sighted; as long as they don't degrade into "ok, screw canonical, just give me a link to a shady host where I can download a malware-clogged zip file" they're unquestionably useful.
Remember, these were originally problematic because folks would clog the answers with competing recommendations without any clear way to suss out which ones were legit. That's absolutely not the case for "where did [Apple] publish [some lib]?"
Which made me wonder: what kind of resource requests aren't off-topic?
Do we allow all resource requests that have a single, well-defined answer, such as requests for official download links, specs and references, since these don't attract spam or competing recommendations?
Or, are these download links the only exception to the rule?
Or, should we ignore that chat message altogether, and are all off-site resource requests off-topic?
Also asking because I want this guidance to be better findable and linkable.
