I asked this question about finding the DFA documentary a couple days ago, and first it just seemed a little controversial; +2/-2, now +3/-3, then it was seized upon as being one of those darned shopping-rec questions and closed. If it's good or bad...I dunno, but I disagree a fair bit that it is a "shopping rec" and should just be closed.

Comments mentioned it being a "classic" recommendation post, to which I replied it doesn't seem to fit into the criteria of the classic "Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!" post by Jeff a while back. This is primarily because the post is totally devoid of any subjectivity, which is the root cause of why these questions are bad. I might draw some parallels to the great ITG debate, were it wasn't ITG per-se that was anathema to our format, but the myriad pitfalls that 90% of them had in common. From the blog post:

• What is your budget?
• Where do you live?
• What are your preferences?
• Which alternatives will you consider?
• When do you want to buy?

The last point, the matter of temporality, I would argue does not fit as I am asking about a specific product (e.g. not "the best GPU", which changes month-to-month). Further, the issue of it being localized in time, brought up later in the blog post, is a bit of a joke compared to many games that we have on the site (Minecraft, Starcraft II, things in open-access beta, etc.). The documentary is far more traditional in that it is what it is and won't change much in format, and while avenues for purchase may come and go, they will in a time-scale equivalent to many of our questions. As far as being about shopping, there are some questions that I find just fine about the act of purchasing a game and some considerations therein.

Also see the chat transcript, there was some debate about this, starting here.

Anyways, are these questions about product availability categorically off-topic? Is there a line somewhere, and where?

I asked this question about finding the DFA documentary a couple days ago, and first it just seemed a little controversial; +2/-2, now +3/-3, then it was seized upon as being one of those darned shopping-rec questions and closed. If it's good or bad...I dunno, but I disagree a fair bit that it is a "shopping rec" and should just be closed.

Comments mentioned it being a "classic" recommendation post, to which I replied it doesn't seem to fit into the criteria of the classic "Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping!" post by Jeff a while back. This is primarily because the post is totally devoid of any subjectivity, which is the root cause of why these questions are bad. I might draw some parallels to the great ITG debate, were it wasn't ITG per-se that was anathema to our format, but the myriad pitfalls that 90% of them had in common. From the blog post:

• What is your budget?
• Where do you live?
• What are your preferences?
• Which alternatives will you consider?
• When do you want to buy?

The last point, the matter of temporality, I would argue does not fit as I am asking about a specific product (e.g. not "the best GPU", which changes month-to-month). Further, the issue of it being localized in time, brought up later in the blog post, is a bit of a joke compared to many games that we have on the site (Minecraft, Starcraft II, things in open-access beta, etc.). The documentary is far more traditional in that it is what it is and won't change much in format, and while avenues for purchase may come and go, they will in a time-scale equivalent to many of our questions. As far as being about shopping, there are some questions that I find just fine about the act of purchasing a game and some considerations therein.

Also see the chat transcript, there was some debate about this, starting here.

Anyways, are these questions about product availability categorically off-topic? Is there a line somewhere, and where?