Do "list of something and why" questions belong to SO?

Question

I was told lately that in somebody opinion "list of something and why" does not belong to SO. Well in my opinion they do but that is up to community to decide so I'm asking:

1. Do questions of type "please list existing technologies to solve this problem and the reasons why to use/not use some of them" belong to Stack Overflow?
2. If they do not belong there where to which other SO site they do belong ?
3. Or they should not asked ?

I was also told that they might belong to programers, but I don't really see the difference between SO and programers (consider this a subquestion). Why was it created ? In my case it just confuses me - I don't know where to put my questions.

Here is the link to the relevant question at SO.

EDIT: Yes, I do think that the question asking for the most fitting technology should be asked with particular problem in mind and that problem should be described there. Or at least some criteria or needs for the technology should be provided (maybe you do not wish to state the problem or you might have needs depending on your skills...).

Answer 1

You usually shouldn't ask questions deliberately trying to build a list. Many of these repositories lack high quality, requiring maintenance that never gets done.

Instead, try asking a question on how to solve the problem you have. If there are existing technologies or applications that will do the job, they will naturally come in the form of answers. But in this fashion, each individual answer provides a conclusion to your problem.

Or, if your interest is in more about how certain technologies compare, ask how those technologies compare. Give us something that we can provide an analysis of, rather than just a shopping list.

Answer 2

This depends, in part, on the question. Some "list of X" questions do better than others. Building a list for the sake of building a list usually isn't very useful. It's better to let lists emerge naturally in answers to a particular problem.

The gist of the difference between Programmers and SO can be seen in their respective FAQs (Programmers.FAQ & SO.FAQ). Programmers is for discussions of subjective issues in software development. SO is for concrete, objective coding problems.

When in doubt, you can ask on the meta sites (Meta.SO and Meta.Programmers.SE) if your question would be on topic before asking it.

Answer 3

I asked a Meta Super User question recently that I think is relevant. This question is broader, but the key theme is applicable:

Instead of asking for a list of Xes, ask how to build your own list of Xes.

If the community generates a list for you, well, that's great immediately, but not much learning occurs. The best situation is for the community to explain what goes into making a list, and throwing in some recommendations with justification.

So, to answer you: yes, "please list existing technologies to solve this problem and the reasons why to use/not use some of them" [sic] questions are appropriate.

Answer 4

The problem with your question

Aspect Oriented Programing (AOP) solutions for C# (.Net) and their features

Is that it runs afoul of the "is this an actual problem you face?" rule. As stated, it is just a meandering, wide-open discussion.

https://stackoverflow.com/faq#dontask

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here. If your motivation is “I would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.

Answer 5

In my opinion, such questions belong to SO (or at least somewhere :) ). Reasons:

• the answer to the question of what technology to use is sometimes the most important thing in your development process. When you choose right, sometimes it allows you to easily create great pieces of software, while choosing anything else would mean failure of the project. And the goal of SO is "better software."
• such questions and answers are likely to become comprehensive lists of technology related to some problem; therefore, the answers will be reused by many other people (and they are easy to find using Google).
• often no such list exists. And when something like that is created at SO it is done by people who understand it, it can be edited and anybody can add new options.