When I was going through some old questions on the site. I found a question which asks for transliteration of a mantra.
What's the English transliteration of this Sanskrit mantra?
It received two answers including a moderator.
So, my question is are questions asking transliteration or pronunciation of the mantra as on-topic?
The immediate answer I expect from the community is
It is a Hindu Mantra. This is Hinduism Stack Exchange. This is the right place for searching for transliteration. Hence it is on-topic.
But, we have to remember that we are also Stack Exchange and being a part of it, some standards are expected. If we look at these type of transliteration questions, it is basically nothing more than copy-paste from other transliteration tools. The questions will be a mantra or shloka in non English and answer will be copy paste. It depends on language efficiency of reading of a shloka of the user which is linguistic aspect and no explanation is really needed in these. What exactly are we helping in these questions in religious sense? More importantly, how will they help our site to grow and help in increasing quality?
On one side, we have a policy of not allowing copy paste answers - The copy-paste issue, Hinduism version and allowing such would be a contradiction.
We have meta posts to Focus on quality and on the other hand if we allow these questions, it will be like giving zero value to what has been discussed earlier. I am bringing these old meta posts into notice because previously, we have decided the scope keeping quality and problems in the long run and its helpfulness into consideration and not just "This is a Hindu work and this site is a right place to ask about Hinduism. So, it's on-topic.". Please remember that there are also limits and quality standards for our site before deciding scope.
Another reason to bring this to meta: There is a huge inconsistency in closing translation and transliteration posts. A question asking transliteration from Saraswati Suktam - (What is the correct pronunciation of this word which appears in Sarasvati suktam?) was closed unilaterally as off-topic and a comment accompanying following
Note that pure sanskrit questions may be closed as off-topic.
(He also answered it in comments. But closing the question and answering it in comments is another issue. Let's see that in another meta thread.)
If transliteration and pronunciation of word is off-topic, why is other question spared? Why is there an inconsistency in closing these questions?
Should we treat transliteration questions as on-topic or off-topic?
