To give such an answer, either you must be pretty profient in that area to be sure – or the question must be a "little stupid". In both cases, an answer should not be limited to "there is no such ...

Well, it's pretty normal that testing recommended solutions is not done "ad-hoc". On some SE sites, I've marked questions accepted several months after they've been given: if evaluation takes time, it ...

We need to clearly draw a line between Which (company|provider|X) offers hosting for Z? which (as everybody here already correctly stated, so I skip the reasoning) should be 100% off topic here, and ...

I see the issue two-fold. First, I totally agree simple link-dropping isn't the way it should go. And yes, as allquixotic put it: ideally it should be backed by personal experience. So far, nobody ...

As stated in most of the above mentioned question implicitly or even half-was explicitly: SR is about recommending software, not providers/companies. So asking for a service provider (be it VPN, DNS, ...

In the past, this was done. And I don't see anything wrong with that – after all it's software "available", and in cases like that the user could even skip the download+install part. But in your ...

When it's not explicitly specified, you must assume a "simple user" asking the question. For him, that would be a clear No-Go: you cannot expect any truck driver being able to code (just an example, ...

I don't see why Wordpress plugins should be an exception here. For reference: Would plugin recommendations about Minecraft be on topic? → OK How should we treat questions about plugins and such “...

The easy way to comment The AutoReviewComments user script provides a handy way to keep a collection of template comments on hand. I (Izzy) modified this script with some features to handle site-...

I don't need help with this software. I need to know if you would recommend it to me! "Can you recommend me product XXX [ for this task ]" is not the type of question in our scope. You've put the ...

Generally spoken, asking for hardware recommendations are not a good topic for our site, for multiple reasons: Not only do the answers get obsolete quickly, but even the questions will certainly. ...

Not exactly when we graduated, but when we got our "graduated design" (which was a little later). While in beta, levels for a site are significantly lower to help it build up. Once it's graduated and ...

With a rep of 25k+, you could check the site statistics. As that's not a real answer to you, there's always the Stack Exchange Data Explorer: stats for our site can be found here. Especially for your ...

To me it's OK as long as the OP explicitly stated "if some coding is involved with Python, that would be acceptable" (see: Is it okay to ask for algorithms on this site?). If no coding skills are ...

In the order given, I think that should be OK – and fully within the rules: At the time you asked there was no solution, nobody gave you one, so you worked it out for yourself and then answered your ...

Does it, in the end, affect the quality of the answer? If you think so (for a product you've never used yourself), you better should not place the answer. Of course, a product you use daily and know ...

Definitely not: Questions provoking list-type answers are frowned upon at all SE sites Our help center lists several list-type questions as explicitely off-topic – a.o. "there is no actual problem to ...

A is definitely frowned upon by most website owners (myself included: if I find a site excessively hotlinking, I send mod_rewrite to take care for that – taking the hotlink as invitation to place a ...

If your only intention (and text) is "Wow, I liked this": Yes, then it's certainly wrong. If, on the other hand, you include why you liked it (e.g. "especial useful point: XXX, easily overlooked." – ...

No. We had a similar issue over at Android.SE (with CyanogenMod and version specific tags) and decided they are only leading to clutter. If the question is specific to a version, that should be stated ...

Make sure you differentiate between asking for a Web API (which I agree with Gilles is on-topic here), and asking for a Web Service / Provider. I know it's hard to draw a line here, so please look at ...

The answer can be found by looking up the corresponding page on Area 51 (where new sites are proposed and getting started). There you can see it was proposed on 2013-10-09 and that its public beta ...

I basically agree – though I wouldn't close/delete an answer based on that. Stating "my"/"our" etc. the poster already gives a certain disclosure (if OTOH the poster tries to hide the fact, posing as "...

At least up to now, we deal with this the same way your second paragraph indicates (bounty even has a special entry for that, and usually draws more attention than a "plain question"). I'd say if the ...

I'd say NO. This site recommends software, i.e. things "ready to use". While this includes libraries for developers, they again are "ready to use" (for them). Our recommendations are based on ...

I'd say yes – as basically this is just an additional requirement (supplementing the OS part – as with an appliance, the OS part becomes obsolete). Of course this assumes that your question otherwise ...

Though I see your point, I doubt that will be a useful tag. If a user wishes that approach, it should be pointed out with the question itself. Currently, we don't even have any tag specifying "payed"....

Now that we've had some discussion, let me sum up a potential solution I think we should chose: We already have gratis and open-source. So when needed, the two can be used side-by-side. There's no ...