I posted a tutorial: How to create a empty module?
This seems like a good idea to me, but since one is not allowed to ask for tutorials, it sort feels like a strict interpretation of the rules would get my question closed?
And assuming the question is allowed to remain, what's an appropriate tag for the question? Tutorial didn't previously exist, but I couldn't come up with something better.
This is a tricky one. Tutorials are not allowed, and it might set a dangerous precedent that results in people using that question/answer and its (what I imagine will be) high number of upvotes as an excuse to ask similar questions.
We definitely don't want to encourage that sort of behaviour; I've removed the Tutorials tag from the question as I can't see any good coming out of keeping that. It's harder to argue with someone that a Tutorial request is off-topic when there's a whole tag dedicated to the subject, and not just a couple of questions.
On the flip-side, the answer you've given to the hook_menu() question, especially, is exemplary - there's no question in my mind that it should remain on the site. It will almost certainly become the canonical source of information for the large number of questions we get from people too lazy to read those docs. Of course those people will also be too lazy to read the whole post and will clutter up the site with some other crap instead, but that's a different issue...
So in my opinion, keep the question/answer, but don't refer to it as a tutorial. If possible change the question to cover a real world example, so it cannot be accused of being overly broad.
I don't read it as tutorial. It is a reasonable, and legitimate question for which, in the past, I have tried to find an answer too. If I remember well, I was following a discussion about the need to have a .module file for a module to be recognized, and I have checked out what Drupal does to detect a module.
It is not a tutorial because it is not written as "give me the steps to do this task."
It is legitimate since a theme doesn't require a .theme file, and somebody could wonder if it is also possible to write a module without having a .module file. Especially now that, with Drupal 7, it is possible to put some hook implementations in .inc file that are automatically checked from Drupal (thanks to hook_hook_info() implementations done from other modules), somebody could wonder what is strictly necessary to write a module that is recognized as module from Drupal.
That said, I would rather not use tutorial in any question. It would have just the effect of confusing users, who could think questions about tutorials are allowed.
I think mini-tutorials like the one you have posted are unavoidable on this branch of SE.
The thing I have discovered with Drupal is that almost everything can/should be achieved by installing certain modules and configuring them. There's no other way to potray this to the user than a numbered list of instructions, whereas on SO, a simple code snippet will sometimes do.
