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Power Users is a Q&A site for questions about the usage of computer software and hardware. We are still a small site and would like to grow, so please consider joining our community. We are looking forward to your questions and answers; they are the building blocks of a repository of knowledge we are building together.
Comments on What should our take be on software recommendation questions?
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What should our take be on software recommendation questions?
Questions that specifically seek software recommendations (as opposed to asking how to accomplish a specified task) come with their own challenges that are to some extent different from those of other questions.
The scope of the site, as it stands, is:
Power Users is a community where computer enthusiasts (power users) ask and answer questions about software and hardware usage. You can ask questions about using software applications (browsers, office suites, editors, etc), command-line interfaces, operating systems and settings, computer hardware, home networking, and so on. While computers are in lots of things these days, this community is more focused on things that are primarily *computers* than, say, your WiFi-connected refrigerator.
Note that this repeatedly makes reference to software and hardware usage, but doesn't talk about recommendations.
What is the community's take on how software recommendation questions, specifically, should be handled?
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Requesting recommendations for particular apps is not a good fit for this site. These are essentially "shopping questions", which are disallowed on other Q&A sites for good reasons. These reasons have been discussed at great length elsewhere, but briefly, the drawbacks of such questions are:
- The answers go out of date fast. They become useless, even damaging, to the long term archive of knowledge.
- There are usually many valid approaches. Distinguishing which is best requires more detailed specification of the problem than the type of users that ask such questions write.
- Even with detailed specification, the importance of various attributes are judgement calls, which are often highly personal.
- The votes end up creating a popularity contest, not a list of alternatives sorted by merit. Those who have found a way to solve the problem have gotten used to their way, are comfortable with it, and often resist alternatives.
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