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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?
2 answers
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The following users marked this post as Works for me:
| User | Comment | Date |
|---|---|---|
| ajhalili2006 | (no comment) | Nov 19, 2021 at 14:59 |
My opinion is: They do no harm and should be allowed.
These are the reasons why I disagree with Olin Lathrop.
The answers go out of date fast. They become useless, even damaging, to the long term archive of knowledge.
I don't think they go out of date any faster than other undoubtedly on-topic questions, such as "how to do X in Firefox GUI".
Let's take the two answered and well received questions:
The answers to those questions will probably remain valid forever.
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.
This goes for any category of question, although the incidence for software recommendation is admittedly higher. Even sites whose subject is very objective will sometimes receive poorly defined questions and more popular languages will get more upvotes than less popular ones.
Even with detailed specification, the importance of various attributes are judgement calls, which are often highly personal.
Detailed specification implies clear requirements, which should be met. If something is not a requirement, it may or not be considered for an answer.
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.
This also goes for other categories of question. Often times there are various approaches to tackle a problem and people have their own preferences, or they won't be familiar with some less popular language, for example. This will inevitably reflect on votes.
Additionally, the distinction between a software recommendation and another "normal" question is not always clear. For example, if instead of asking for a matrix solution software that person asked for a way to invert a file with a matrix, without asking for the software directly? Probably someone would chime in and say "install this".
All in all, I do not think software recommendation questions need any kind of special treatment: We have comments, downvotes and close votes.
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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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0 comment threads