Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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What is Hardware?
Not hardware, but Hardware.
We've half-defined our scope, thanks to Robert. The other half of defining our scope is an issue that's been sitting around since Day 1, and one that I've seen plenty of ...
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Who should our moderators be?
Somehow we've gone two weeks without someone posting this - I'm pretty sure that's a record. I figure that we can start nominating folks so that we're ready to go when we hit public beta in a few ...
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What type of hardware is allowed?
I have asked this question: Standing desk with ability to raise/lower?
It is receiving a few close votes for "not about computing hardware."
A key thing this site will need to determine is what the ...
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Should we have SR-style quality guidelines for questions and answers?
This site is different than most - we're an opinion based site. This topic is the reason 'shopping recommendations' were banned on Stack Overflow. If we don't want to become a spam center, I think we ...
user1
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Vote Early, Vote Often!
Note: This post is (nearly) identical to this one on Mythology Stack Exchange
I would like to echo a post that Scott Morrison made on Meta.Tex.SE:
I'm a moderator from MathOverflow, and this "...
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Are "What should I consider when buying" questions allowed? [duplicate]
Note that this discussion is no longer current. We revisited this topic later in the life of this site.
Please see Do we still want general advice questions? and post your thoughts there.
Should we ...
user1
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How are we going to handle questions / answers becoming outdated?
This was brought up on Area 51, but I don't think it was sufficiently addressed.
Taking into consideration the following:
The primary goal of a Stack Exchange site is not to simply provide an answer ...
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What is required for a question to be 'high quality'?
This is the question version of What is required for an answer to be 'high quality'?
(It is modeled off of What is required for a question to contain "enough information"? from Software ...
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Are "X vs. Y" questions allowed?
On SR, we decided that "X vs. Y" is not a good question. Thumbing through the example questions for this site on Area 51, I see a few of them:
Do mechanical keyboards have any real ...
user1
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Why is this community not allowed to decide its scope?
The general rule I've seen around Stack Exchange is that a community is sovereign in deciding its scope¹, as long as it makes a modicum of sense. Stack Exchange employees may enforce quality ...
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Is a scope of "product recommendations" + "pre-purchase inquiries" agreeable?
The Community Team is nearing the private beta evaluations to decide whether to move this site forward, but I've hit a few snags expressing purpose and the scope of this site.
I am confident we are on ...
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What should we call our chatroom?
We have a chatroom. It's currently called "Hardware Recommendations", which is the default name for a new site's chatroom.
What better names are there? As one of the Real Essential Meta Questions, ...
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Pricing as a requirement
How do we handle pricing requirements stated in questions?
Do we:
Consider them hard limits?
Expect proof of sale-price in all answers?
One of the problems is that pricing differs all over the ...
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{Results added} Testing single-vote closure on Hardware Recs
TEST COMPLETED
We've reset the votes required for the time being while we look at the data, which we should be posting soon. Thanks so much for working with us during this test.
A few months ago one ...
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Be Nice. People are coming here for help, don't insult them or their hardware
When a user with old hardware comes here to ask a question, it isn't appropriate to insult their old hardware. Comments like this are off putting:
Your PC is a dinosaur, and your graphics card is ...
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What is required for an answer to be 'high quality'?
Seeing +15/-0 consensus on Should we have SR-style quality guidelines for questions and answers?, I would say it's time to figure out what we require in answers.
What is required for an answer to be '...
user1
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Are answers recommending unreleased, unannounced hardware allowed?
Prompted by this answer to What's a good life-proof Android phone?:
The upcoming Moto X Force is the phone that sound like the perfect fit(its not revealed or released yet!)
Watch out! These are just ...
user1
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1
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Introducing your pro-tem moderators
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
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What can we do about technical support questions?
Recently, I posted an answer here on meta. In it, I realise that we have a problem with technical support questions - essentially, going on half of our questions are closed, and going on half of those ...
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Are DIY hardware recommendations allowed?
Now, I have been interested in the maker and hacker community for a long time. I have learned about the Arduino and Raspberry Pi, etc. Are recommendation questions about such DIY hardware platforms ...
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My answer was deleted: Software Defined Radio wrongly considered as "software"?
This question wants a device that can send generated GPS signals over an antenna cable. I gave exactly that in my answer:
You can achieve this using an SDR (software-defined radio). It's ...
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Community Promotion Ads - Let's advertise this site!
There are ads that have already reached the 6-vote threshold and have been submitted to other sites. The following are the relevant ads that have been submitted:
Arqade
Game Dev
Graphic Design
...
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Proposal: Require computer specs to be posted in the question instead of behind a link
I'd like to propose a quality guideline to help prevent confusion in the future.
Proposal
Users posting information about their computer need to have the components listed in the question itself not ...
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We're "graduated" to public beta!
If you open the site incognito mode it shows up now :)
https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions
We can celebrate with whatever!
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Should we have a close reason for technical support questions?
We've gotten several questions that have been technical support type questions:
https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/695/cant-be-established-connection-with-internet-whats-up
https://...
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Are external hard drive enclosures on topic?
This topic is related to a recently closed question for a recommendation for an external hard drive enclosure. I goal here isn't to debate that single question, but instead debate whether or not an ...
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Do we want festive headwear?
Due to the support shown by the community, we are signed up to participate in Winter Bash.
If you have questions about the hats, please ask them here or on Meta Stack Exchange.
Original post:
Winter ...
user1
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I want to recommend 2 products: should I leave one or two answers?
(This question is basic but I couldn't find the answer skimming through meta.)
I read a question, and I want to recommend 2 products that seem to match the requirements: should I leave one or two ...
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Are DIY Recommendation answers appropriate?
I've seen a few answers that propose the OP gets their hands dirty and build a thing to solve their problem. I can't seem to find the others right now, but a recent answer is this:
What I'm ...
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How to deal with "yes" or "no" questions?
I stumbled upon this: 250 GB SSD for programming cheaper than ~£100?
The question really narrows to "should I buy this or this", in which the answer is really a "yes" or a "no". That makes for a ...
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How broad can questions be?
There may be value in limiting the breadth of questions asked. For example, if I was to ask the question What components should I use to build a quality workstation for under $3000?, there are lots of ...
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Are questions about acceptable hardware for given OS on topic
I am looking at replacing my home server and trying to understand how a specific CPU will perform in my environment with a specific OS. Are such questions on-topic?
For more clarity, my question is ...
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Should we define "pre-purchase" vs "technical support"?
After a recent discussion about technical support questions, I went through some of our recent closures to gather more data. I return with a question for the community:
How do we tell the difference ...
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My, we are a talkative bunch. Should our comments be so chatty?
I've noticed that many of our answers are getting comments akin to "Thanks! This is a great recommendation!" or simply chatter
On other SE sites, this type of comment - one that isn't adding more ...
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Are appliance-related questions on-topic?
I think someone asked this on the commitment phrase, but I do not remember the responses.
Are we going to allow questions related to appliances?
An example could it be:
Which washer/dryer allows ...
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Let's clean up some broken windows - A proposal for dealing with tech support questions
We've had previous discussions about technical support questions we recieve. Repeatedly. There have been concerns about how many [on hold] or [closed] questions that this places on the main page.
...
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Which other Stack Exchange sites have a userbase that would be interested in our site?
Now that we've reached Public Beta, part of our job is getting the word about Hardware Recommendations out. One way to do that is via Community Ads. These ads are voted upon by the Stack Exchange ...
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Do we still want general advice questions?
Prompted by this question.
A long time ago, we decided that "what should I consider"/general advice-type questions are allowed. We had at least one of these questions, which seemed to be pretty well-...
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Should we allow software alternatives to hardware requests to be "valid" answers?
Do we allow alternatives to the requested hardware to remain as valid answers? I believe we allow a wide variety of hardware to be an "answer". Not all of the hardware can fulfill all requirements, ...
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How would you rate HR at this moment?
How would you rate HR at this moment?
Is the community active enough?
What problems may we encounter in the long run?
What do you especially like/dislike about this site?
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How do we promote our site?
Because some of the private betas are not active enough, it would be nice to talk about promoting our site.
Do you have any interesting proposals?
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Are questions asking how well a piece of hardware does X accepted?
Triggered by How many players would this VPS be able to take?: Are questions that essentially ask this accepted?
I am looking at x hardware ([specs]), and I'd like to know how well it does ([...
user1
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How should disclosure work if we're answering based on hardware for review?
Well, while I've not been that lucky yet, I'd be pretty happy to try out hardware and review it in various places, primarily my blog. I do that already with hardware I buy. There's two possible ...
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How do we encourage new users to stay on topic?
11 of the last 12 questions are on hold for being off topic.
What can we do to encourage users to stay on topic?
Is there any indication that the authors of these off topic questions are returning ...
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How to handle questions with too few requirements?
After seeing a few questions listing very few requirements, I realize we never actually discussed what to do if there is a low-quality question in terms of soliciting an overly-broad product ...
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Differences from SuperUser
Unfortunately a lot of questions here are about Hardware support as well as shopping. These questions belong on SuperUser. How do we prevent users from asking questions? How can we as a whole improve ...
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How to avoid decreasing user activity?
At this moment we have 59 visits/day (one of the lowest rates since the start of the private beta).
When Community Promotion Ads can be launched?
How to encourage users to get involved?
Should we ...
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Moderator attention needed
I'm not sure if this is on topic here, please suggest better place if not. If I may, I'd like to ask @Adam and @Undo to review this.
I've asked 2 questions today, both of them are put on hold by @...
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Are questions related to third party hosting requirements on topic?
I've thrown up a question related to a dedicated server that will be hosted (most likely) by a third party. The idea behind this question is to upgrade from a VPS to another piece of hardware. Is a ...
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How can we detect (and deal with) spam?
The premise of Hardware Recommendations is that Person A is looking for one or more product(s) that will satisfy certain criteria or complete a certain task. Persons B, C, D, etc. may write answers ...
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