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I asked a question about recommendations for website software recommendations. It was closed as being off topic and not related to web programming or web software.

My question was specifically about recommendations for web programming or web software.

Are requests for recommendations not allowed?

The question also received a comment about being an incorrect way to recruit people, when I never mentioned or implied I was interested in anything other than software recommendations.

Here is the question.

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Thanks for the answers, the markdowns on this question, and additional markdowns on the original question. –  Steve Jul 25 '11 at 5:38
    
Sarcasm aside, I hope you better understand why your question was closed. Questions like this are just not a good fit here for a number of reasons. If I were in your place, I'd troll Webmasters Meta to see if there was a way I could ask a question that would gain me the information I am looking for without being OT –  Won't Jul 25 '11 at 13:59

3 Answers 3

Yes, this question is off-topic and was correctly closed.

Although I think it probably fits our "not constructive" close reason better (and would personally have voted to close it as such, instead):

This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

The problem is that you're asking for recommendations, and there's no right answer to that question. Everyone is likely to have a different recommendation and each of those recommendations would be equally valid. We attempt to discourage subjective, open-ended questions like that because they have a strong tendency to devolve into extended discussions, which doesn't fit well with a Q&A format.

The FAQ explains the type of questions that should not be asked on Stack Overflow, and this fits squarely into the first category:

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

  • every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite __?”
  • your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use _ for _, what do you use?”
  • there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
  • we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if __ happened?”
  • it is a rant disguised as a question: “__ sucks, am I right?”

As for the comment, I think Raynos was criticizing the type of software that you're looking for, rather than the question itself. He wasn't one of the users who voted to close, so there's no particular reason to associate that comment with why people thought your question didn't belong.

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6  
+1 - what he just said. –  The Anti-Santa Jul 24 '11 at 12:20

Your question fell into the "shopping and recommendation" category of questions that are not considered useful.

Whilst your question was not about hardware, the type of question falls into this realm:

Q&A is Hard, Let’s Go Shopping!

See also:

Do you get irked by the 'attitude' on SE?

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Stack Exchange is not "Find software for me" Q&A site and therefore I think no Stack Exchange site will be able to help you.

Additionally, your question isn't "What do you recommend", but "Will you find a software for me?"

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The question asked specifically for recommendations, and asked a total of zero people "will you find software for me". –  Steve Jul 25 '11 at 5:37

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