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I recently asked a question of how I can obtain the latest official patch for an old DOS game. The official site no longer provides the patch, and most other fan sites for the game have dead or incorrect links.

The question has since been put on hold, and I have attempted to improve the question but still believe it will remain on hold.

I think that the question is important (seeing as google failed miserably). However, the answer in its current form is a link to a download for the patch - which at any time can easily become a dead link.

Does the site allow for questions regarding how to obtain a software update? If so, could someone offer some guidance on how such questions should be asked.

If not, is there a way to salvage the question? I was moving towards a "how can I tell if my game has the latest patch?" approach.

Here is a link to the question:

How can I distinguish between an official or unofficial patch?

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    This sort of question basically boils down to "please point me to a web site that has a patch for this game", which falls under the "software rec" VTC umbrella. At the same time, it's definitely a valid (and likely common) thing for players of older games to want to know, but the fact that correct answers pretty much have to be bare links to other websites make them a bad fit for the reasons you noted. "How can I tell the difference" might possibly be somewhat more on-topic(?), but it doesn't really help you solve your original problem anymore, which is unfortunate.
    – Cloudy
    Feb 27, 2015 at 16:23
  • @cloudymusic - I have changed the original question enough I believe to warrant it being re-opened, which I can also answer. The real problem boils down to the fact an explicit patch is hard to track down and I think I can answer the problem without giving any links. With such information it should help track down the patch and/or check if various instances of abandonware copies have been patched fully.
    – user101016
    Mar 1, 2015 at 15:48

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No - questions asking where to get anything are generally regarded as off topic because we do not provide recommendations. Your question in its original form was asking where you could go in order to download a patch.

The problem with these kinds of questions is they usually spawn "where can I find a mod that does " or "where can I find a patch that does " questions, whose answers will nearly always be primarily opinion based, low quality, and consist of just a link (which often will end up no longer pointing to what it was originally pointing at) and a couple of lines of non-descriptive text. These are not useful answers to anybody apart from the original asker, they prompt further discussion as people agree and disagree or recommend additional or alternative solutions, etc.

Your question in its current form is far more acceptable, you're asking what distinguishing features an official patch for a specific game will have, in comparison to presumably a large number of unofficial patches created by some community for an old game.

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