Are "does 'x' meet these criteria" questions allowed?

Question

Prompted by this question, should we allow questions that lay out a set of requirements and then ask if a specific piece of hardware fits them?

Answer 1

I interpreted that question as, "Recommend hardware. And, BTW, here's something I found during my research that might be suitable." Which presumably is the kind of "show your work so far" question we want to encourage.

Even if it were literally, "Does x meet this need?" the first answer to that example shows that a very helpful answer can be provided even by someone who doesn't own the device.

The only time I would vote to close is if it were a question asking something that can clearly be found in published (online) specs, without any special technical knowledge.

Answer 2

I would intuitively say that yes we should as it's directly asking if other people would recommend it.

However, I think these points need to be taken into account:

• These questions may be a bit harder to answer. In order to do answer it properly, one pretty much has to own the product (or maybe it's cousin in the same portfolio - version 2 etc.).
• Do we want to consider answers that don't specifically answer with ownership knowledge as being good? In other words Yes, that UPS should be good because of its 600VA etc.