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I recently asked this question:

Car purchase selection App

and after I found an answer posted it as well. Now Mawg mentioned in his answer that this is bending the rules for: No Websites.

So, I wanted to clear that up within the community as this seems to be an edge case: Is this a webapp or a website?

2 Answers 2

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I would argue that the question asks and the answer provides a webapp. If I had the tool myself without the data it would still be useful as I could enter the data of the cars that interest me myself and still use that comparison. That assumes that I not only have the frontend myself but also the data entry side that the operators of that site surly have.

The data it contains are very valuable, but the real value is in the comparison function.

From my own criteria:

  • + denotes an argument about why its a webapp
  • - denotes an argument about why its a website
  • 0 denotes an argument thats in between

For my answer:

  • + mostly interactive content
  • - No possibilities to create own content
  • 0 site invites you to stay and consume what (others) made
  • - One can't create the data oneself.
  • + possibility to transport content out of the site via export functions.
  • - No ability to import content to manipulate it
  • + Given you had the program of that thing yourself and would run it on your own server without any data from the original source, the program would still be useful.

Its a draw.

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Wow, we have opened a can or worms here ,-)

A static, HTML only, page is clearly a web-site. And what we are discussing - in this case - is not.

However, with the advent of the new Beta site for "web site recommendations" I have been recommending people to post there.

And I have only just discovered "Web Applications".

Clearly, we need some discussion here.

Given those two sites, where, perhaps we can say "it's about software on someone else's device (server)", is it as simple as saying that this site is about "software on your device"?

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    We had a lengthy discussion on this over here: meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/219/94 I thought the border between the two would have been defined by this. Unfortunately the ADAC Site/App I recommended is a draw on the dots (and I'm kinda biased :))
    – Angelo Fuchs
    Jul 6, 2015 at 13:31
  • He he. Yup, it's tricky. all right. As I said, I did not know about area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/57/web-applications until today - how does that fit in with your previous discussion? Wouldn’t the ADAC app belong there? I just pity the folks who want something done & don't care how - which site should they ask on?
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jul 6, 2015 at 13:50
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    Web Applications explicitly forbids recommendation questions in their FAQ.
    – Belisama
    Jul 19, 2015 at 19:58
  • Then, so long as they are well specified, and don't just ask for "the best", I suppose that we should be home to such questions, as there seems to be nowhere else to ask them.
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jul 20, 2015 at 10:09
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    @Mawg, Web Applications is for asking how to use an existing Web App (think Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Wikipedia, etc). It's like superuser.com but for web applications.
    – Pacerier
    Jul 20, 2015 at 21:38
  • Yup. And we are (currently) the only "recommendations site, so I guess that all such requests will land here. Not a problem, imo; especially if there is nowhere else to ask.
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Jul 21, 2015 at 6:10

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