Let's address those contradictions first.
- The comment states general advice goes out of date quickly and implies that specific recommendations do not, or at least implies that general advice is unwanted because it goes out of date quickly. However, the exact opposite is the case: Specific recommendations by their very nature go out of date quickly, while general advice does not. I found this confusing.
I meant what I said, rather than what it might have implied. Specific recommendations do go out of date quickly, I don't deny that. However, general advice questions are more likely to become canonical advice sources and Google targets, which would require (or at least make it highly desirable) for us to update them regularly and keep them up to date (because yes, advice does go out of date quickly with the introduction of new technologies and systems).
Product recommendations, on the other hand, are generally only used by one or a few people, and are designed to be valid once and not again two years down the line.
- The implication that things going out of date quickly is a reason for not wanting them here seems to contradict the nature of this particular site, which specifically revolves around giving advice that goes out of date quickly.
That's also explained by my notes above.
- The linked help center topic and guidelines state, pretty directly:
A question on Hardware Recommendations has one of two goals:
- A request for a product recommendation, OR
- A request for information that will lead to a product decision
This contradicts the above. If this type of question is not wanted here then it should not be listed as acceptable in the very help center topic that the close reasons point to.
That's fair enough; maybe we need to update the help center to reflect that. It was last updated before the newer meta post about general-advice questions was posted.
- The "Do we still want general advice questions?" topic has 5 votes yes and 5 votes no. There is no consensus, and a check mark on an answer in that type of question does not constitute community agreement. This lack of consensus is somewhat contradictory to a unilateral close of general advice questions for this reason.
You're right here; however, the issue was also discussed in chat at some point (though I don't know when) and I recall it reached a consensus for disallowing those questions, which is why I put the checkmark on the no answer. That's the current consensus, as far as I'm aware. Other general-advice questions have been closed based on that premise without complaint, so I haven't found issue with it yet.
Now let's address those moving forward points.
- Moderators, despite their opinions on the matter, should not be taking unilateral action when specific vs. general topics are in question. At least not until we have a clear community consensus. Unless it's obviously too broad, for now defer it to the usual CV mechanic, or at least wait for 3 or 4 close votes.
You're most used to Stack Overflow, it seems, where moderators are almost invisible in terms of question closure. The situation here is somewhat different; moderators are very active in closing questions because we have to be to keep the quality requirements and standards up. The community does still VTC questions, but mod votes are far more common.
However, I don't close things without policy to back me up. I've already discussed why the consensus is to close general-advice questions; that's the policy that's backing my decisions up on this type of question.
- From what I've read the actual argument against general advice questions is that they don't always directly lead to purchases. Whether or not that is a good or bad thing is part of the debate, of course, but let's be clear on that: The argument against general advice questions is not that they "go out of date quickly". We don't want to confuse people (it is confusing with the contradictions outlined above in mind).
Fair enough. I'll be citing both reasons in future closures, if they continue to be required. I talk about going out of date quickly because that's one of the reasons discussed in chat (which raises the point with me that we need to update Meta documentation to reflect that).
- We may want to edit the relevant posts above to state that the issue still seems to be up in the air, assuming it is still up in the air. We can't have rules stated in help center topics when we don't all agree on the rules.
I don't think it is still up in the air, to be honest. If you'd like to revisit that issue, a new meta post is in order, along the lines of Do we still want general-advice type questions? (this post is more about one situation, and is not suitable to be a canonical documentation source).
As for editing, I'll have a review of the various posts associated with this issue, and edit them to bring them all in line to one policy.
And now finally, the todo list.
Yup.
- We need to decide on a good reason either way so something reasonable can be provided in comments if asked.
Unless anyone can come up with anything better, I'll use the combination of the two reasons we saw above. Feel free to ping me in a comment or in chat if you've got something.
- Perhaps a custom close reason could be in order.
Possibly, possibly not. Historically, we haven't got enough of these questions to warrant a full close reason on them - we're already using 2 of our 3 possible custom reasons. That said, I have seen more of these in the past few weeks, so maybe it's time to start collecting data about the issue to see if we need one now.
