Is it time to discuss custom close reasons?

Question

There comes a point in every beta site where custom close reasons are discussed and created. I have been with this site for a while (though not from the beginning), and I'd like to hear from the community at large whether we've reached that point.

Are there many closed questions of a particular type that would benefit from a custom close reason?

I can think of one or two classes of question that might benefit from custom close reasons:

1. It seems to me that book recommendation questions are fairly common among new users, and are almost always off-topic. The close reason for book recs should include a link to a meta post (1 and/or 2), and a link to chat.
2. Translation requests. These questions, while less common than recommendation requests, seem to come up every once in a while. This close reason, if instituted, should briefly explain the difference between a bad translation question ("translate this for me") and a good one ("Why was this word used in translation?" or "What is the history of this translation?") and link to relevant meta posts.

What are your thoughts on this? Do we need custom close reasons? Should we create other ones? (Keep in mind that we can create up to three reasons that can always be edited/removed/whatever by the mods as needed.) Please respond in answers, rather than comments, so that other users can vote (up and down) on your responses, so as to allow for a clearer consensus to form.

(See also this earlier proposal.)

Answer 1

We should have a custom close reason for recommendation questions

There's a strong consensus that they're off-topic, but there also seems to be a way of changing recommendation questions into valid questions, therefore making them on-topic. I therefore propose the following close reason:

Questions asking for list of works or reading recommendations are off-topic, as they generate opinion-based answers. Try to adapt your question to fit to our Q&A format, or feel free to ask for recommendations in chat or a non-Stack Exchange community.

_{Open to amendments, feel free to edit.}

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If one wants to see examples of closed and deleted recommendation questions here, here they are (need +2k rep to view):

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/508/which-ancient-books-claim-that-jesus-died-of-old-age

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/158/resources-to-find-specific-short-stories-in-anthologies

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1463/are-there-any-authors-in-the-middle-east-similar-to-the-enlightement-philosopher

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1898/translation-request-good-translations-of-dantes-divine-comedy

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2192/are-there-any-good-critical-works-on-hermann-hesse

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2519/writers-or-critics-that-wrote-about-photographys-place-in-art

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2235/recommend-a-short-story-during-the-realism-period

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/439/are-there-any-examples-of-books-that-use-inherently-funny-words-for-humorous-eff

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/612/what-books-should-you-read-to-fully-grasp-the-rebel-by-albert-camus

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1894/popular-books-with-short-indexed-passages-like-the-bible

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2378/looking-for-a-book-discussing-post-modern-issues

• https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/2108/reference-request-explications-of-keats-poems

And maybe some others (we thank @Mithrandir for finding those for us).

Answer 2

I disagree with Gallifreyan; we don't have a clear consensus about recommendation questions to create a custom close reason yet. We all agree that a question along the lines of "I like X; can you recommend some books for me" is off-topic. But the situation is very different for academic recommendation questions. So until that gets clarified; I don't see the point in creating a custom close reason.