How specific does a question need to be?

Question

Proposal: Software Recommendations

The site just entered the commitment phase as I was trying to comment on some on example questions, so I'll have to ask here instead.

A couple non-specific questions:

• Is there a good/free open software for recording, editing, converting and filtering sound?
• Are there any good free tools to manage the household budget on Linux SUSE?

These are easily searchable (eg, from, google, or from a package manager).

For the first question, for example, the well-known/popular sound applications are likely to be voted up.. but the results should in theory be no different than googling for 'sound editor'.

I would think much better would be to ask specific examples such as "What is a free sound editor I can use that has a filter to remove hissing from an old cassette tape recording?" or "What is a budget tool that will let me set maximums and track spending by category, which runs on SUSE? No hosted web apps, because I don't trust the cloud."

Answer 1

Probably, as the other StackExchange websites, you must show what you have researched so far, and why X or Y software did not work out for you. Otherwise, you will be voted down. This can help on the part of how specific a question must be.

Answer 2

I question “easily” in connection with a goggle search (probably just me though!) because of the timing aspect. Software develops quickly and many advisory web sites are rarely updated. Also, the most detailed are often from the authors of the software, who tend to give an unrounded view.

Personally, I’m not concerned about votes – I just would like a system that works, for me “provides good As to Qs that are relatively easy to find”. Though I agree that in the SE context the voting system is an inherent part of that.

So I may not much care if the non-specific yields similar results while seeing no reason to ban the sort of specific examples you give.

Answer 3

One of the reasons I would like this site to succeed is that in the case of software/API recommendations, google is next to useless. Many times I have tried to research a library and come across forum after forum, post after post, with the ball going back and forth... but without any decent reasoning.

I would hope that the upvoted answers to questions in this topic reflect a reasoned approach. if I ask a question about the best Money program for someone who rents - and yet sucks at budgeting, I am going to look not for a specific software package touting the comparisons with others... but seasoned users of all packages saying what it did for them. Then, and only then, can I make an informed choice.