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Generally "book recommendation" questions are considered a bad idea. Often opinion based and usually pretty broad. Yet I can't help but think there's a place for them on a place like this (yes, I know that sentiment is somewhat controversial).

I was wondering if we might be able to use Community Wiki type questions to make "can you recommend a book for" questions more palatable. That way we have a go to place for "can you recommend a good book for learning aerodynamics" or "can you recommend good book for learning IFR" etc, etc.

I know, a bit controversial, but I think a wiki style questions that addresses a topic once might be worthwhile...maybe.

Anyway, that's why I put this question here. Please feel free to discuss.

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  • $\begingroup$ "Book Recommendation" questions are almost always very difficult - sometimes they're great resources, other times they're total disasters. Personally if we were going to try a "definitive X book list" style question I'd be inclined to structure it toward flight training, A&P (mechanic) training, basic aerodynamics, etc. -- I know FAA publications that flesh out the first two very well. $\endgroup$
    – voretaq7
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 3:15

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It's a tough call, and quite frankly depends on how the community reacts to it. I also question how valuable it is when it's likely just a set of opinions, and you can get opinions anywhere (google/amazon/forums/chat).

If you're willing to [literally] put your reputation on the line and ask the question, then you would find out for sure. I think it's better for meta to be reactionary rather than proactive in deciding what does and doesn't belong. It helps to have concrete examples of why a certain type of question helps or hurts a site.

That being said, I don't personally think it's a good fit for our format, but that's just one opinion.

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I would suggest adding this information to the tags that you are interested in. For instance, flight training books would be great information to add to .

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  • $\begingroup$ Ive always thought book recommendations belong on the tag wiki $\endgroup$
    – Jamiec Mod
    Commented Jun 19, 2014 at 10:57
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An archetype for a question that can only have a single community-wiki answer does exist in our system, but it's not going to be put to wide spread use in the immediate (or probably even distant) future. The idea is, folks need to read what's there, then add what they think might be missing. No problems with 5 pages of answers, link-only answers that don't offer any context into why something might be good, spam, "thanks", etc.

But we already have that functionality in the tag wiki, which is where these really do belong. I think our time is better spent on improving that system than trying to bend questions and answers into something they weren't designed to support. But, in order to improve it, we need folks digging in and using them for purposes such as this and letting us know how it could be better.

To that, yeah - I'd go with the tag wikis instead.

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