If we were to make a SE on Hardware Recommendations, most of the questions which would end up here will get outdated very quickly. It's possible to also encounter questions such as:
I think we should find a way to prevent such questions where we can discuss the jist of a question rather than pointing out a product which the person can buy.
Proposal: Hardware Recommendations
This sort of problem has been mentioned on many SE sites before, and generally the response is "it can't be helped, but the answer was right for the person who asked the question, so it doesn't matter".
Frankly, unless the site is about something which has happened in the past and will never change again (I dunno, Chess maybe?), it's just something we'll have to live with.
right for the person who asked the question then what value do the questions and answers hold for the future?
Aug 21, 2014 at 21:13
I'd agree with the posters who have suggested a time-based tagging system - in particular for answers, not just the questions. This will give future readers a reference point. Also, searching should be able to filter out old questions.
As stated, this problem is not unique to hardware recommendations. I've routinely searched for advice on many SE sites and found old answers that are irrelevant, even though the question passes the "no requests for opinions" test.
One thing that should probably be required is that the poster demonstrate a clear understanding of the hardware they're interested in. In other words, they should be specific when making the request. So for example:
I want a good computer to play games on. What should I buy?
...would not be an appropriate question. This type of question would incite a huge debate from the gamer community. :-)
On the other hand, if a user can name specific hardware requirements, this could be a very useful resource. Since most search engines tend to be advertising-dominated, and results are definitely skewed by who's paying the big bucks, searching for hardware devices, especially when requirements are very specific, on search engines can be challenging at best. You often may find yourself drowned in advertising for products that do either way more or way less than you need.
Here's an example of what I feel would be a good question for such a site:
I am looking for a single-board router solution. The hardware must be an x86 processor, include at least 1GB of RAM, be able to boot from either SD or mSATA, and have at least three independent hardware gigabit Ethernet ports. I plan to run Linux as the operating system on this device, and it will operate headless while in operation. While not essential, low power is preferable (e.g. USB or 12V powered).
Some people may argue that specifying the purpose of the hardware should be done rather than asking about specific hardware requirements. In terms of asking for hardware, however, I don't think this is quite as appropriate in all cases. Most notably, a person may be asking for specific hardware because they need it to interoperate with something else. Or, perhaps they're most familiar with software that can run on the given hardware, or they're even trying to roll their own solution based on their existing knowledge. For example, an inappropriate answer to the above question (in my opinion) would be something like:
Forget x86, forget lots of RAM, and forget off the shelf Linux. Buy a cheap WRT54G, load OpenWRT, and then buy a NAS device and mount it on the OpenWRT device. Problem solved.
Requiring only the intended purpose of hardware could result in answers like that, which may not help the user at all.
What do you guys think?
Honestly, I think this is the least of the likely problems with this site – mainly because the most likely and most imposing problems will be those that afflict every other SE site, e.g. completely off-topic questions, extremely low-quality questions.
And frankly, both of your examples are far too broad to be good questions – primarily because there are too many good answers even at a single moment in time. But, personally, I think it could still be awesome if questions like that had lots of high-quality answers, and voting could handle the depreciation of answers over time.
Maybe we could adopt some kind of convention on tagging questions, e.g. 2014-Q4 or 2014, so that questions and answers could be readily identified in their appropriate context.
And keep in mind that all of the other sites suffer this exact same problem – the time scales are just different. Lots of once-good answers on Stack Overflow and Server Fault and Super User are no longer relevant today.
This is the same problem that we have in Ask Ubuntu. We have two new Ubuntu release every year and lots of questions need to be updated according to the newest versions.
For example:
How can I configure Unity?
What is the correct way to install proprietary ATI Catalyst Video Drivers (fglrx) directly from AMD?
Usually the recommendation for writing answers is that they should be as generic as possible. Using generic descriptions and pictures that are still specific enough, can bridge the changes between versions in a way that still solves the problem. If this is not an option, then a new answer for a new version/year is created and the question will have a table of contents.
This is the biggest problem of such forums.
Such questions get outdated quickly, and there's no way to prevent it.
So we can only think about how to get rid of old questions/answers.
There can be some workarounds, I guess this one can help a lot.
For such questions, add a feature named Answers expires in, so the answers of that question get deleted/archived after specified amount of time.
Example: Click on "Answers expires in" -> select amount of time from menu "Half year/1 year/.../Infinite/Specified time". And answers of that question get archived after (for example) a year.
It can be a button placed near the "flag" button.
The same feature can be added for answers, so that the specified answer gets archived.
There can also be default value for this option, such as 2-3 years for hardware recomendations.
It would be a great feature to add; the posts will get updated easily,
the site will always be up to date and always useful !)
This is not the only forum where the problem exists, it exists in many other forums.
Really, people need these site very much; everyday a lot of people buy hard (and soft) and really a lot of people want to get recomendations from experienced experts. (Just count out how many questions were closed in SO and SU, which were about recomendations, it's the bare minimum!)
But outdation is probably the only reason while such highly required sites have few visits, so adding such feature can have very good impact on sites.
I think what you really mean to ask is, "How do we prevent people from asking questions whose answers will be quickly made obsolete?"
The answer to this question is, don't even try. Instead, embrace this class of question on the condition that it will be treated in a way that is compatible with one of the most important principles behind the Stack Exchange format--specifically, the notion that a "good" answer is one that provides value to future visitors of the site.
Before I suggest a simple yet somewhat radical solution, let me present one likely future for this site: a year after launch, nobody will care what the best unlocked Verizon LTE smartphone was today. After 2 years, people will start to become annoyed at the site because it's a cluttered mess. Even before that happens, people will start to systematically duplicate every question whose answers have been rendered obsolete, for the guaranteed rep boosts. Allowing dozens or hundreds of practically duplicate sets questions over time, most of which have obsolete answers, will only serve to clutter up the site and bury any current information, making the "related" sidebars and simple searches on the site practically useless. If we follow one of the other suggested solutions for this problem, it will be impossible to find certain types of current hardware recommendations without specifying an appropriate date tag. After 5 years, the site will be about just as worthless for finding current hardware recommendations as the forums of yesteryear. The problem is not with the questions, and not with the answers; but rather, the fact that (a) many answers effectively have expiration dates after which they will have no value to future visitors, and (b) the failure to deal with this fact appropriately.
I mentioned earlier that I have a simple but somewhat radical solution. Brace yourself, because here's the radical part: Any answer with a known or unknown expiration date has no value future visitors after that date, and should be deleted once it is rendered obsolete.
"But wait!!!!!" you say, "If you delete all those answers, that's going to wreak havoc on everyone's reps on this site!" And that brings me to the simple part: don't give them the rep in the first place...nothing gained, so nothing to lose.
That said, if nobody is a fan of converting to a CW immediately, no problem. Just wait until after the first review to convert to a CW, or don't convert it. Rep for any "worthwhile" post (score of 3 or greater and visible for at least 60 days) is preserved even after deletion, including rep gained from a question or its answers prior to that question's conversion to a community wiki.
So the 2-part solution is this: for any question whose answers are guaranteed to be ephemeral, require that the question be made a community wiki. Cull obsolete answers periodically.
The process would go more or less as follows:
Because the question is a community wiki, all answers are automatically community wikis. Again, after the question is converted, no rep is gained for an upvoted answer, and no rep is lost when the obsolete answers are deleted.
(Note: see meta for clarification on what happens to rep if an answer was posted and upvoted before the question--and consequently answer--was converted to a community wiki.)
