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Should recommendation questions be on-topic?
Home Improvement seems like a site where recommendation type questions might happen quite frequently, including product/component recommendations as well as tool recommendations. I think these can be categorized as:
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Which kind of technology/type of component/tool is most suitable for the job?
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What parameters are important when buying tool x?
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Which brands of product/component/tool/household appliance are recommended?
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Where can I buy x? Including vendor- and pricing-related questions, possibly quite localized.
Which of these topics should be on-topic at Home Improvement (if any) and in what form?
3 answers
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1 and 2 are OK, but 3 and 4 are not.
Manufacturers and suppliers come and go too frequently and may be quite different around the world. These kind of "which brand is best" answers also tend to be emotional and based on very limited experience, so are more popularity contests than any real information.
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I think this might be a sensible approach:
On-topic
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Questions seeking recommendations for components/tools/materials most suitable for a certain task.
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Questions looking for hardware recommendations for components/tools/household appliances etc where some requirements are given.
For example: "I'm looking for a hand held drilling machine. I want one that is cordless and can double as screwdriver. Battery life is important, but apart from that I'm a hobbyist and on a limited budget."
Off-topic
- Recommendation questions asking "what is the best-..." without defining "best" or providing sufficient background and details.
- Too localized questions. Questions where to find a certain local store, a good sawmill, a local contractor etc are unlikely to be of interest to many future readers.
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If Home Improvement is the only proposal we consider, I think all should be on topic. They are all important topics for people discussing home improvement. Forbidding them would undermine the usefulness of the community.
For many home improvement projects, a tool or specialty part is necessary. The quality of this tool or part can make or break the project. The market for these is huge and full of companies that use predatory sales techniques to prey on inexperienced, uninformed ordinary people just trying to do some basic maintenance on their house without breaking the bank. Someone who is not a contractor with years of experience is not going to automatically know what product is best, and many home improvement tasks are things you have to do once in a while so if your first few purchases fail to work you've already wasted too much money and blown out your budget. The only real solution is to talk with other enthusiasts, so that people who got burned on a certain product can share their experience and save everyone else from repeating their mistake. In fact, this is often better than advice from contractors or professionals, because they have a very different perspective that doesn't always apply to casual DIYers.
However, 2-4 would be a better fit for the Shopping site instead of DIY. 2 is asking for a buying guide or shopping advice. 3 is asking for individual product. 4 is asking about localized shopping advice. These are already called out in the shopping proposal, and the shopping community will, over time, develop standardized ways of handling each type of question across numerous product types, not just tools.
If we consider the Shopping proposal as well, then it makes little sense to post 2-4 on Home Improvement, and users should be gently directed to ask on Shopping instead.
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