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Software recommendation questions are on-topic here, and it's even one of our most popular tags: . However we haven't talked much about how we should approach such questions, apart from this: Software recommendations for X or Y.

Recently it was brought to my attention that at least one other SE site has discussed the topic quite extensively compared to us, and I just thought I'd re-post the link they gave me here: Apple.SE: How should I ask about getting a software recommendation?

We can also add more of the network-wide discussion on this topic here, and start some discussion of our own, if people desire!

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I basically agree that quite a few things in this regard can be handled by the community on sight just as camps said, there is possibly more to gain from this, especially for external users.

A nice page regarding this topic would be great. At least from my point of view. We have gotten a few of these questions at Chemistry Stack Exchange, where they are not often on topic.
Whenever I find something that is not on topic at Chemistry, but still well asked, I'd like to find it a better suited home (if possible). Thankfully, Tyberius has always responded to my questions (also pretty damn quickly), before I had to make a decision. However, if I can skip this step in future, I'd be very happy. With some basic guidelines I can checklist off of, I can probably come to a conclusion myself.

There are grey areas, too. Whenever there is a question that is not strictly off-topic, I want to leave it entirely to the user, what to do. Having a page that summarises "best practices" would certainly help in advertising for this site.

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I really think that for that type of question, we don't need to spend such amount of thinking and time.

If the question (any question) is not well posted, a suggestion to the OP in the comments or an editing looks great for me.

The exception will be if someone ask for something like "how to crack...", "how to obtain cheap license...", etc.

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