It sounds like you are asking for how this feature was invented, basically. That might be relevant to a historian, but how does that relate to software engineering or the SDLC (to use language from the meta question you linked to)?

@GregBurghardt I appreciate the clarification. Are there any StackExchanges or other forums which this may be a good place to ask? I searched, and this was the closest I could find.

I also saw several questions in this style, including: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/116614/417879, softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/328112/417879, and many more.

Those are older questions that, if asked today, would probably be considered off-topic. Questions considered to be on-topic have evolved several times over the life of this community. The scope of SoftwareEngineering.SE (formerly "Programmers") was much broader than it is today.

I actually don't know where to ask history questions about software engineering.

@GregBurghardt These further clarifications are very helpful, thank you Greg. In my view, history is highly relevant to SDLC. It seems to me, if we know how things came to be, it helps us understand if it is still relevant today—as we make new decisions and design new systems. For example, if one were to engineer a new programming language or text processing environment, should one still use regular expressions, and in particular lookbehind assertions? Understanding history is key for me to understand the rational of why things are the way they are.

The problem with purely historical questions is that they can only be answered accurately by the people involved in making those decisions in the past. If anyone today (who was not involved in the original decision) answers the question, then it would be purely from their opinion. There are rarely definitive sources of information for these types of questions. That makes questions purely about the history of something opinion-based, in the very least.

@GregBurghardt Yes, definitely not interested in opinions. I'm interested in clear historical sources, like mailing list archives, books published, interviews, etc. — The earlier historical questions I linked in this forum provided sources of that type. It's also what many Wikipedia articles use for historical evidence.

That would fall into "asking for resources" which is also off-topic.

@GregBurghardt I just looked through many past recent posts to understand the community consensus. I'm confused. It seems to me, if you interpret my question as "asking for recommendations", then it seems almost all questions on here can be interpreted this way. Take for example this recent question: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/439485/417879 — the post asks for prior-art, that is, they want references (resources) to others using this concept before. Or put differently, they ask for the prior history of this concept: has it been used before, and if so, with what syntax?

@Michael, a question simply containing text that reads roughly "are there any resources" does not necessarily mean the question is off topic. Many times people ask a perfectly on-topic question and include things like "is there any official documentation?" The heart of the question is not "where is the documentation". The title of the question is "Looking for the name for an abstract class that models functions as objects". The focus of the question is not finding resources.

You also happened to pick a "name this thing" question. Naming things is notoriously subjective. Looking at the history of that question shows that votes were all over the place. Lots of up and down votes.

I think questions about the history of something are more appropriate for a general purpose forum like Quora.