How specific does a "tools" recommendation question have to be to become constructive?

Question

I'm a bit concerned about the question What are some good tools one can use for creating and maintaining an online CV? and the creation of the tools tag. It's very easy for these to become list questions and answers are often based around personal preference rather than some software/ect actually being outright superior.

Some sites have allowed this questions as long as they are asking for tools for a very specific and well defined purpose, meaning that Product B really is superior to Product A for this particular task because of X feature which helps you Y. I do not want to open the door for "my favorite word processor is Pages".

Can we work with these questions at all? If so, what makes a "good" one and what makes them Not Constructive?

Answer 1

I am in favor of soliciting tool information specifically to help solve a very specific and well-defined purpose, as you said. Here I'm thinking about questions that come up on Project Management SE -- it has its fair share of oft-closed polling questions, e.g. "What are some good PM tools you all use?" -- but also perfectly fine questions, such as "What Lightweight/Project Management or Bug Tracker Software Can I Use to Manage Exceptions, Milestones, and Old Bugs?"

However, I am not in favor of tool solicitations for general purposes because they are little more than a poll/the same information could be found via Google and thus are Not Constructive.

Using What are some good tools one can use for creating and maintaining an online CV? as an example, I would close this as Not Constructive. The title, and repeated as the last question, is specifically polling. Now, the lead-in itself doesn't actually match the title/the question, because it's about how applicant tracking systems are a pain in the butt. That is true, but the question asked doesn't solve that problem.

If this were a question about how to store one's personal information so as to deal with applicant tracking systems when encountered, that would be a constructive question (even though you can't do that with ATSes, I could certainly explain why). But it's not that question.