For example, look at this question : iPad app for offline HTML/CSS/JavaScript testing?
What if I am looking for software with almost the same criteria, but for a different platform like perhaps Android?
The concern here is that if I ask the same question with just platform changed, soon this site will be filled with multiples of seemingly same question.
To go at this the way we're currently structured, it would require that we do support these copy questions as separate questions. There's no way to "filter" answers other than by votes and such - we can't organize things so that people can pile on solutions across multiple platforms and then a prospective user can then pick which platform they're looking for and search the content of those. Their only choice is to dig through the whole mess at once and hope they find what they're looking for.
This isn't very helpful to the asker or others on the same platform, to have answers that are by existence not helpful to them. It would thus require that if platform is a need to the user, that it is as much a requirement as the other components.
Platform isn't really alone in this circumstances. It is entirely likely that someone needs an application that does all the same things that someone else has asked, but with one critical difference. And this isn't really different from how it works on other sites - if someone has a problem like someone else's, but with one critical difference, that then goes on to exist as a separate question. Because at the end of the day, a different problem is being solved that needs a different solution.
Could this lead to the site getting flooded with variants? Certainly, but demonstrably it hasn't actually happened across the numerous rec attempts on the network. It is a strong concern that gets voiced each time the subject is brought up, but often the number of "variants" that show up is largely outnumbered compared to the number of unique recommendations that are asked for.
