<p>I thought we'd <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/486/suitable-venue-to-help-find-specific-statistical-data/">settled this one</a> a <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis/38#38">couple of times</a>, but it's a tough restriction to enforce when it isn't listed in the FAQ.</p>

<p>I still think these should be off-topic because of their potential to clog up the feed with questions that are likely to be irrelevant for many of our users.  I know we have tags for filtering questions, but I dislike that approach - within the domain of statistics and ML, there are all kinds of things that I don't yet know will interest me.  I love being able to open a random question here and learn something new.  I don't think I or anyone would get that same kind of surprise learning from data sourcing questions that aren't at least somewhat limited by field.</p>

<p>I think questions like these are best handled by the ever-expanding subject matter StackExchanges - even more so than a Data SE (in my opinion), because that strikes me as too diffuse a topic to really lure the multiple experts for each topic that you'd need for a high-quality community.</p>
