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Caleb
Caleb
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Software Recommendations is on its 15th month in beta and only has 58% of questions getting answers. Contrast with Photo.SE, which has close to 98% answered questions. So I wouldn't say it's Software Rec is going all that well -- certainly not well enough to justify a whole new site to handle just one category of our off topic questions.

There's a long list of sites that provide complete reviews and, often, head to head comparisons of photography gear. Such sites do a better job than a SE site ever could because the reviews are done by a single person or a small group of people working from a consistent viewpoint. With a good review site, you'll get one detailed and thoughtful "answer" that answers the question "Is the [Canon|Nikon|Olympus|Pentax|Sony|Fuji][DKX][0-9][DX]*[Canon|Nikon|Olympus|Pentax|Sony|Fuji][DKX]*[0-9]*[DX]* right for me?" Take the reviews on DigitalRevTV, for example: you might love watching Kai Wong's antics, or he might drive you crazy, but at least you know what you're getting with him.

With a SE site, on the other hand, you'd potentially get lots of brief answers or occasionally a long thoughtful one, but always from different people with unknown viewpoints. The result would be not unlike Amazon reviews, where practically every item gets a lot of good reviews from people who own that item and think everyone else should own it too, and some bad reviews from people who bought something else instead, or who had a bad customer service experience or something. And since Amazon already does that, replicating it on SE doesn't add a lot of value.

Software Recommendations is on its 15th month in beta and only has 58% of questions getting answers. Contrast with Photo.SE, which has close to 98% answered questions. So I wouldn't say it's Software Rec is going all that well -- certainly not well enough to justify a whole new site to handle just one category of our off topic questions.

There's a long list of sites that provide complete reviews and, often, head to head comparisons of photography gear. Such sites do a better job than a SE site ever could because the reviews are done by a single person or a small group of people working from a consistent viewpoint. With a good review site, you'll get one detailed and thoughtful "answer" that answers the question "Is the [Canon|Nikon|Olympus|Pentax|Sony|Fuji][DKX][0-9][DX]* right for me?" Take the reviews on DigitalRevTV, for example: you might love watching Kai Wong's antics, or he might drive you crazy, but at least you know what you're getting with him.

With a SE site, on the other hand, you'd potentially get lots of brief answers or occasionally a long thoughtful one, but always from different people with unknown viewpoints. The result would be not unlike Amazon reviews, where practically every item gets a lot of good reviews from people who own that item and think everyone else should own it too, and some bad reviews from people who bought something else instead, or who had a bad customer service experience or something. And since Amazon already does that, replicating it on SE doesn't add a lot of value.

Software Recommendations is on its 15th month in beta and only has 58% of questions getting answers. Contrast with Photo.SE, which has close to 98% answered questions. So I wouldn't say it's Software Rec is going all that well -- certainly not well enough to justify a whole new site to handle just one category of our off topic questions.

There's a long list of sites that provide complete reviews and, often, head to head comparisons of photography gear. Such sites do a better job than a SE site ever could because the reviews are done by a single person or a small group of people working from a consistent viewpoint. With a good review site, you'll get one detailed and thoughtful "answer" that answers the question "Is the [Canon|Nikon|Olympus|Pentax|Sony|Fuji][DKX]*[0-9]*[DX]* right for me?" Take the reviews on DigitalRevTV, for example: you might love watching Kai Wong's antics, or he might drive you crazy, but at least you know what you're getting with him.

With a SE site, on the other hand, you'd potentially get lots of brief answers or occasionally a long thoughtful one, but always from different people with unknown viewpoints. The result would be not unlike Amazon reviews, where practically every item gets a lot of good reviews from people who own that item and think everyone else should own it too, and some bad reviews from people who bought something else instead, or who had a bad customer service experience or something. And since Amazon already does that, replicating it on SE doesn't add a lot of value.

Source Link
Caleb
Caleb
  • 31.7k
  • 14
  • 9

Software Recommendations is on its 15th month in beta and only has 58% of questions getting answers. Contrast with Photo.SE, which has close to 98% answered questions. So I wouldn't say it's Software Rec is going all that well -- certainly not well enough to justify a whole new site to handle just one category of our off topic questions.

There's a long list of sites that provide complete reviews and, often, head to head comparisons of photography gear. Such sites do a better job than a SE site ever could because the reviews are done by a single person or a small group of people working from a consistent viewpoint. With a good review site, you'll get one detailed and thoughtful "answer" that answers the question "Is the [Canon|Nikon|Olympus|Pentax|Sony|Fuji][DKX][0-9][DX]* right for me?" Take the reviews on DigitalRevTV, for example: you might love watching Kai Wong's antics, or he might drive you crazy, but at least you know what you're getting with him.

With a SE site, on the other hand, you'd potentially get lots of brief answers or occasionally a long thoughtful one, but always from different people with unknown viewpoints. The result would be not unlike Amazon reviews, where practically every item gets a lot of good reviews from people who own that item and think everyone else should own it too, and some bad reviews from people who bought something else instead, or who had a bad customer service experience or something. And since Amazon already does that, replicating it on SE doesn't add a lot of value.