For the nine millionth time... SUBJECTIVE QUESTIONS ARE FINE.
For crying out loud people, subjectivity isn't the devil. Especially with questions like this one which...
Great subjective questions inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. The best subjective questions invite explanation. If you’re asking for a product recommendation of some kind, you want answers to contain detailed information about the features and how they can be used, and why you might want to choose one over the other. “How?” and “Why?” has more lasting value than a bunch of product-feature bullet points or a giant enumerated list, no matter how extensive. In contrast, the bad subjective questions let answerers get away with hit-and-run answers that maybe provide a name and a link — but fail to provide any sort of adequate explanation, context, or background.
Well, look at those answers. They sure do seem to include a great deal of detailed explanation and justification for their various positions...
Great subjective questions tend to have long, not short, answers. The best subjective questions inspire your peers to share their actual experiences, not just post a mindless one-liner or cartoon in hopes of being rewarded with upvotes for being merely “first.” Sharing an experience takes at least one paragraph; ideally several paragraphs. If I’m asking about how to bake cookies, don’t give me a list of grocery items: milk. butter. vanilla. eggs. There is virtually nothing I can learn from a short, static list of grocery items that make up a recipe. Instead, tell me what happened the last time you made cookies from that recipe! Share your detailed experiences, so that we all might learn from them.
All of those answers are substantially longer than the average gaming.se answer. They generally include a decent amount of real knowledge, and aren't just copied and pasted from a database.
And so on and so forth. It meets all six criteria laid out in Jeff's post. Subjectivity is fine. Discussions are not. They are not the same thing. It is perfectly common and appropriate for a single question to have more than one worthwhile answer and for knowledgable experts to disagree as to which one is 'best'.