It is frustrating when people's view of what music theory can deal with is just one narrow slice of what is possible in music. I think the problem can be looked at two ways though - partly it's a lazy view, but there's also a problem with the balance of extant music theory teaching that's out there in books, classrooms, and websites. Generally I think this SE site does a good job in giving people a better than average perspective.

@topo - your question around what sites with a relationship to software analogous to our own is not one that makes any sense to me. Personal Productivity has a very slightly looser stance on this than Music, but it is at a much earlier stage in its growth so has more of a need to accept questions. You see this with any site.

it might help if you could give some examples of questions on software recommendation that we have closed that you think should be open. Like I said, I have seen it so many times, and it's very difficult to make it work within the SE framework

...even on SoftwareRecs it is a bit of a challenge

Well the question we've come in from is meta.music.stackexchange.com/questions/2299/…, which isn't about a particular question that was closed - just about the topic in general.

exactly - the linked question off that is also relevant meta.music.stackexchange.com/q/125/104

...basically I'm wondering why "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that." can't apply to software just as it does to everything else.

@topomorto oh, for that specific - it does - if the software is the musical instrument

I'm not saying that shopping list questions should be on topic.

hence why we do have DJ questions, and sequencer questions here

Does software gave to be the instrument though? Can't it be a theory or notation aid?

@topomorto if the question is 'what software should I use' then no

If it's 'how to I use Cubase to do X' then probably on topic

but again, this is why specifics are important

As I said in the meta page though, I'm talking about question that are somewhat in the form "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that."

I got to that meta question from this one:

Apart from the fact that the asker seems aware that what they need is likely to be a piece of software, it seems to fit the allowed format.

Yeah - that one is a list question - they rarely work anywhere. Again softwarerecs is an exception, so it does struggle with a lot of the stuff dumped from other sites

you can answer that type of question using google and get loads of results, all of which are probably right

There are different levels of 'listiness' though. "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that" invites a level of listiness that isn't disallowed.

remember that the close reasons are a set of boilerplate ones. We have tweaked them over time, but they still don't catch every eventuality

OK, but I'm just saying that some level of listiness per se isn't an absolute no-no.

agreed

(or potential listiness)

As for googling - what if SEO twists the results towards sites of larger businesses? what if the asker doesn't know the right keyword to search for? (the 'what you should look for to achieve that' part). What if there actually isn't a product that reliably does what is needed?

Teaching someone the right way to search online is definitely not within our remit. And if there is no product that does what the OP needs then we cannot answer either

@RoryAlsop It's not a question of teaching someone a way to search online, but teaching them what to search for. I know I keep coming back to it, but we suggest "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that." Once someone knows what to look for, they can look for it...

...and if someone can correctly state that there's no product or type of product that fills someone's needs, then that it itself is a really useful answer. To be honest I think "you can answer that type of question using google" isn't generally seen on SE as a reason to disallow questions; rather, SE sites are supposed to position themselves as providing useful content that people will find when they do search the web.

@topomorto it's important to note that the community decides what is on-topic and off-topic and this is no diffrent. There are reasons to allow them and to disallow them. One big reason to dissllow them is almost every question that kind of about recommend attracts spam. It also should be noted that the software tag has the most unanswered questions so in general software questions aren't the community top priority or focus.

@Dom yep we both participate in the community in various sites - hey, here we are! I can see that there are some unanswered questions in software - many of them are very specific questions about specific pieces of software which would probably better be handled by communities related to those products. I'm not sure if all software questions should be tainted by association.

Just to regain some context, the topic for discussion is this:

The asker has asked "I am trying to ask a question about seeing if anyone knows about a piece of software that does what I am looking for".

That seems very close to "describe the required function and setting in which the equipment will be used, and ask what you should look for to achieve that", which we allow...