Discovering relevant evaluation criteria in the context of available software

Question

I'll start with the example question I'd like to ask:

I would like to know on what basis I might choose between available open source LINQ implementations (assuming there is a choice, not sure whether MS made theirs available recently), other similar libraries such as opaleye (Haskell), and the null option of not using any of those tools. My goal is to be able to compose queries from smaller parts while retaining good performance and the ability to tune performance to match usage. What other criteria come into play when choosing between the available choices?

Back to meta:

In particular I'm interested in criteria that are relevant to the software that is actually available. In particular, often:

• Many software choices satisfy a criterion. In that case, the criterion is relatively unimportant to the choice.
• No software choice satisfies a criterion. In that case, the criterion is important, but only by suggesting other questions or awaiting future answers when new software is released.

So questions like this naturally leads to evaluation of:

• Which criteria distinguish the available software
• Which software satisfies which criterion

These are lists, but often they are short lists dominated by a few things, or even by just one.

Note that the example question has fairly specific scope / criteria (open source, implements LINQ or similar functionality, specific performance goals).

This search for relevant criteria is one of the most common types of question I have when looking for software. I have found "crowdsourced" help useful in this kind of question, but these days SE tends to get the audience, so those other sources are arguably less helpful than they might otherwise be (also, I'm lazy and like to use SE).

So, is there a way to ask this kind of question that would fit on this site?

Just to hammer home a point, my question is similar to this one but with what seems a crucial difference:

Are "What are criteria for X" on-topic

The difference is that I am almost always interested in the criteria strongly guided by the context of the available software, rather than criteria in the abstract, rather divorced from the actual software that is available.

Am I wrong to be sceptical that my software choice criteria questions along these lines would not be closed on other sites like SO (and on SR also in fact)?

If not, where's a good place to ask this kind of question these days?

Answer 1

The search for criteria, as narrow as they may be in your specific case, is unfortunately off-topic here, as you can see by your linked meta.

If your requirements are already narrow and you describe your situation well, it would be a good question for the site if you ask for recommended software right away. If you did search by yourself before that (which I assume you did) and realized that there are not many softwares that fulfill your requirements already it would not be too broad and thus okay.

The search for criteria might be on topic on other SEs (but I'm not as active on others to know for sure), specific to your area of interest. The LINQ libraries alternatives criteria question might be on topic on Stack Overflow or Programmers.SE, you might want to ask in their metas. Keep in mind that the question for alternatives directly will most likely be off-topic anywhere but here.

Answer 2

What's wrong with asking for software that meets your minimum criteria?

You can of course add to your question "elaboration of additional features is welcome", but I thought the point of SR was to provide answers with such elaboration so that one can tell the answers apart.