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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 The answers go out of date fast.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 te...
Answer
#1: Initial revision
by
Quasímodo
·
2021-11-16T19:44:31Z (about 3 years ago)
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 The answers go out of date fast.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 I don't think they go out of date any faster than other undoubtedly on-topic questions, such as "how to do X in Firefox GUI".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: - [Simple text editor for Linux with support for coloring individual words][1]. - [Matrix solution software][2]. 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. [1]: https://powerusers.codidact.com/posts/283847 [2]: https://powerusers.codidact.com/posts/284508