Should shopping and/or hardware recommendation questions be allowed on SuperUser?

Question

I've seen a recent surge in questions asking for recommendations on buying X type of hardware (replace X with mice, GPUs, CPUs, hard drives, flash drives, you name it). Looking at TheTXI's answer here, I feel these questions don't belong on SuperUser.

Diago seems to at least partially agree on this one. He left the following comment on a question yesterday:

SU Is not the shopping channel.

I feel the same way. These questions have a very short life span; hardware is obsolete in a matter of months. People have argued that making these questions CW allows others to edit them and keep them up-to-date. I have never seen this happening. Someone wants something, he asks, gets an answer and that's the end of that question.

SuperUser really is heading in multiple directions, although no one in the community seems to know what these are or whether they're good or bad. The way things are going, I feel it is turning into a Trilogy Yahoo! Answers, despite the efforts of a lot of its users.

Answer 1

To clarify:

My problem is not keeping these questions on SU, my problem is with the quality of the questions being kept on SU. Jeff recently pointed out that SU has 1.2M hits a month, which is by no means a small amount, and the reach of the site is higher then SO solely because of the general purpose theme when searching on Google. These questions tend to get out of hand later one with drive by postings, and are often not well maintained.

I have no issues with someone putting some effort into looking for a product, or even asking for a reasonable comparison.

Asking based on price is also a sensitive topic. To use the above example, a few of the below $50.00 mice listed on that page are way more than $50.00 in SA.

Explicitly localised shopping or service questions are closed outright, and lately I have not even debated the question as to why. If a worldwide audience is not involved, then it doesn't belong.

Answer 2

This SU question you cited is OK in my opinion

https://superuser.com/questions/96934/any-cheap-and-good-mouse-with-extra-buttons

Because it's

• somewhat timeless
• relatively constrained in scope
• sort of fun -- show mice with a ridiculous number of buttons!

Now in the general case, I definitely agree with you. Highly localized, time-specific "what should I buy?" questions are of little value and should be strongly discouraged. (Maybe the /faq needs updating with some text here?)

But the question you cited is a weak example of the problem. Perhaps Diago or Splattne or Ivo can edit your question to include better examples.

edit: an excellent example was referenced, one in which the author re-asked in a much better way!

Before -- bad
https://superuser.com/questions/97038/which-usb-sticks-are-reliable

After -- good
Tool to test USB sticks?

Cheers to Tony.

Answer 3

Recommendations on where to buy or what to buy make the trigger finger jump at the "too localized" option in the close menu.

They may be computer related, but most of it is helping people buy things that are wholly specific to their budget, location and/or purchase whims.

It's not like having to work out why a router is failing or configuring an FTP client to with through SSH.

Maybe even "subjective and/or argumentative" if the question is pushing it.

Answer 4

It would probably help if the FAQ would exclude certain question groups from being asked, making it easier for moderators to close them without getting complaints afterwards.

Though the fact that these kind of questions are being asked indicates that people do want a platform to ask them. We need more StackExchange sites for these topics!

Answer 5

No.

Not only does these questions have a short lifespan, they are usually very geographically localized. I have no use what so ever for shopping tips in the US.

Answer 6

In a way, you say such questions shouldn't be... and yet you answer them. Like I said on another question, more than a problem in people asking questions, you have a problem in people running to answer before checking for duplicates, or even wondering if the question is correct.

There was even one asking on meta for a "mind-reader" badge for "finding the correct answer to a badly asked question, lacking details". If people are ready to jump through hoops to answer questions which are not matching, or are not describing a problem correctly, this is where we have a problem. People should encourage askers to ask good questions, precise ones, and not jump to answer anything.

However, I agree that some more rules on some specific kind of questions like these shopping ones wouldn't hurt, as it would make things more clear in rules. I disagree though with:

SuperUser really is heading in multiple directions, although no one in the community seems to know what these are or whether they're good or bad. The way things are going, I feel it is turning into a Trilogy Yahoo! Answers, despite the efforts of a lot of its users.

In my opinion there are people, and lot of them, who know how to steer the website in the good direction. Diago typically was a good choice of moderator, as he is rarely letting borderline questions alive, he is rather known to close on sight. Other users with enough reputation to close are detecting questions to close and doing the job, too. The problem only is that people tend to complain about it, because they argue that their question was "computer related", etc. What we need here is indeed a more precise FAQ, to have a reference of what should and should not be, but only as a reason to close, given to users who ask wrong questions. Because initially, people moderating are doing an acceptable job, I believe.

I would argue though that there are not enough moderators like Diago, as he is doing (in my humble opinion, but it could be linked to the fact I am on SU only in the European time range) 80% of the moderation job on SU. I hope that Ivo replacing TheTXI will help in that. Note that this is linked also to the fact we still don't have that many 3000+ users, so it's hard to get 5 votes fastly, usually it needs a moderator to come by and make the final close, with only 1 or 2 votes.