My reading of the question is that you're sorting out purchase options. What you want to know is off-topic. It might be better just to discuss it on Root Access.

One of the reasons why product recommendation questions are off-topic is because the value of the information has a limited timeframe. Asking whether something exists has that problem. Today it might not, tomorrow it might. It wouldn't have that issue if you ask a technical question, like "Is there a technical issue that precludes making ABC hardware that does X?" assuming the hardware is on-topic.

Yeah, synonymizing keeps both tags and links them, so people can search for, or enter, either one, but the primary tag is what shows on the post. Merging replaces the secondary tag with the primary one. If you just merge, the secondary tag disappears but could be recreated as a new tag. If you synonymize then merge, I think use of the secondary tag produces the primary. There's an explanation here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70710/….

I agree with the need for action, but suggest that [hotkeys] be synonymized with [keyboard-shortcuts], after which merging is optional. We want to retain the ability of users to be able to easily find the tag via their term of choice.

And, of course, posters here always research on Google before posting. ROTFL. OK, you're the one with some expertise. I'll trust your judgment.

@Chenmunka, it would be cross-posting if Cody was aware that it is an automated system that applies throughout SE. In this case, it's probably just an assumption that each site has its own policies. and he has created a similar problem on multiple sites. It might be an incentive to read the help section. :-)

That makes sense. This is out of my area. I was just aware that they made hardware. Are the questions here mostly about the OS rather than the hardware? Is it common for people to just buy the OS license and run it on their own hardware? Also, if some of the questions are about the hardware, might [mikrotik-router] and [mikrotik-switch] apply to either hardware, OS, or both (I'm thinking about the most generic way to do it)?

Might [mikrotik-router] and [mikrotik-switch] be more intuitive and generic? I take it RouterOS and SwOS are product lines? I'm just wondering whether any posters not familiar with the product line names might find the tags confusing (and OS is typically used for Operating System). Also, if Mikrotik introduces new product lines of similar products, the product-specific tag might not seem to fit.

Most of your questions that weren't well received have a lot of comments describing what's needed to improve them. So start by editing the existing questions to address the issues raised in the comments and to add the requested detail. That should influence the ban if it's enough to get some of the downvotes reversed.

Take the quick tour and review the relevant guidance in the Help section (from the question mark icon at the top). That will give you a better orientation to the kinds of questions that are a good fit. It could be that the best venue to get the information you need is our general chat room, where you can have more of a discussion. (cont'd)

Cody, welcome to Super User. I see you've been in the SE network for a couple of months and here for a few weeks. It looks like you haven't taken the site tour on any of the sites, and I suspect you haven't visited the Help section to see the guidance on asking questions. The problem you're running into is viewing the site like a forum rather than like a knowledge base. Your questions tend to be very general, at least as worded; often brainstorming or general knowledge type questions rather than focused problems that can be answered definitively from the information presented. (cont'd)

In this case, those edits don't make the answer better because it is still horrendous. Just posting an image doesn't begin to turn it into an acceptable answer. One of the things that makes software rec questions off-topic is that the information becomes dated quickly. One of the recommendations is obsolete, and who knows whether the other products are still good recommendations today. "why not go further and even delete them?" That's what we should do with the thread, but it was popular 7 yrs ago, and it's harder to delete threads with high upvotes.

On a basically good post, your edits could have made it better. But in the context of that answer, nothing you could do short of writing an actual answer would be an improvement.

The problem was that the question is long dead and off-topic. It's off-topic because it's the kind of question that attracts horrendous answers like the one you tried to improve, which is nothing but links. Answers recommending software should follow the guidance here for each product: meta.superuser.com/questions/5329/…. Basically, that entire thread should remain buried; it received too many upvotes to delete any time soon. Your edits made the answer only a little less horrendous, and we really don't want to bump that to the main page.