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I was going to close a question for "General Reference" today but... The option is not there, why?

We have it on the EL&U and it says this:

General reference:
This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a single link to a standard internet reference source designed specifically to find that type of information.

My proposal is to add it. Now, basic questions can be useful, but too basic questions such as "How do you read this hiragana syllable?" can be easily looked through any search engine.

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Can you cite some examples where this has been needed? Append the example to your feature-request post.

I tend to agree that these "Language" sites are good candidates for the [General reference] close reason, but we've been rolling out this setting on a very limited basis.

Citing specific examples where this will be needed will strengthen the case that the "General Reference" close reason is needed here.

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  • Sorry for my late reply... There really wasn't a real case back then I suppose, but this question, wouldn't it be General Reference?
    – Alenanno
    Jun 19, 2011 at 20:01
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    @Alenanno: It's hard for me to say, not knowing the subject. The "general reference" close reason will be added if it becomes a persistent problem; Either that, or we decide to deploy it network wide.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Jun 20, 2011 at 15:32
  • "Deploy it network wide"? Sorry I didn't get that part... But it doesn't really matter if you don't know the subject, General Reference is when something is easily answerable with standard resources, so answers are "search-copy-paste" :D But I don't wanna insist more than it's necessary. If necessary we'll come back on the matter! :)
    – Alenanno
    Jun 20, 2011 at 16:24
  • @Alenanno: "Deploy it network wide" means simply that we currently have 55 Stack Exchange sites and we may decide someday that "general reference" is a good close reason for every site and add it to all of them... Japanese SE, included.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Jun 20, 2011 at 16:53
  • Ah ok, thanks. :)
    – Alenanno
    Jun 20, 2011 at 17:04
  • Questions like these: japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/8296/… , japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/9411/…
    – Flaw Mod
    Nov 13, 2012 at 4:53
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Vote to close as a duplicate already handles this and if we have a limited set of reference questions in community wiki, the asker gets there question answered and we discourage the reappearance of the questions.

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    What if the question is "how do you say 'dog' in Japanese"? We're not going to have a community wiki question for every word. Or are you suggesting a community wiki question with links to dictionaries?
    – Amanda S
    Jun 5, 2011 at 18:11
  • @Amanda S - That would be one idea. Also, general questions related to sentence structure might be closed that way.
    – user51
    Jun 5, 2011 at 22:50

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