Tool-recs have always been a subset of game-recs: a recommendation of a game or something for a game. Having their own tag was a tagging convenience, not a sign that they weren't shopping questions subject to our now-defunct special exception. Even if someone persuasively argued that the different tags were a significant separation, they are still self-evidently shopping questions and therefore off topic.

Note that it's somewhat inaccurate to say that we banned the game-recommendation tag—we would ban question types, not tags, if we were to ban something. It's inaccurate in a different way to even say that we banned shopping questions—we just stopped making an exception for them, and watched the default network-wide ban reasserted itself. That might seem like semantics, but that's fine because this issue is tangled with semantics and it's important to understand what did and didn't happen when we the mods executed on the overwhelming agreement that we should stop accepting shopping questions.

Since all recommendation requests are off-topic by default, if we want to host tool-recommendation questions, a new exception would have to be created. The old system did not work, and won't be restored wholesale or in part without some very persuasive arguments that it will turn out differently this time.

There's no reason we can't have a new exception, except that nothing has yet been proposed that might make them work in our format.

Tool-recs have always been a subset of game-recs: a recommendation of a game or something for a game. Having their own tag was a tagging convenience, not a sign that they weren't shopping questions subject to our now-defunct special exception. Even if someone persuasively argued that the different tags were a significant separation, they are still self-evidently shopping questions and therefore off topic.

Note that it's somewhat inaccurate to say that we banned the game-recommendation tag—we would ban question types, not tags, if we were to ban something. It's inaccurate in a different way to even say that we banned shopping questions—we just stopped making an exception for them, and watched the default network-wide ban reasserted itself. That might seem like semantics, but that's fine because this issue is tangled with semantics and it's important to understand what did and didn't happen when we the mods executed on the overwhelming agreement that our exception's rules did not work. Everything that was only permitted by that exception is again off-topic.

Since all recommendation requests are off-topic by default, if we want to host tool-recommendation questions, a new exception would have to be created. The old system did not work, and won't be restored wholesale or in part without some very persuasive arguments that it will turn out differently this time.

There's no reason we can't have a new exception, except that nothing has yet been proposed that might make them work in our format.

Tool-recs have always been a subset of game-recs: a recommendation of a game or something for a game. Having their own tag was a tagging convenience, not a sign that they weren't shopping questions subject to our now-defunct special exception. Even if someone persuasively argued that the different tags were a significant separation, they are still self-evidently shopping questions and therefore off topic.

Since all recommendation requests are off-topic by default, if we want to host tool-recommendation questions, a new exception would have to be created. The old system did not work, and won't be restored wholesale or in part without some very persuasive arguments that it will turn out differently this time.

There's no reason we can't have a new exception, except that nothing has yet been proposed that might make them work in our format.

Tool-recs have always been a subset of game-recs: a recommendation of a game or something for a game. Having their own tag was a tagging convenience, not a sign that they weren't shopping questions subject to our now-defunct special exception. Even if someone persuasively argued that the different tags were a significant separation, they are still self-evidently shopping questions and therefore off topic.

Note that it's somewhat inaccurate to say that we banned the game-recommendation tag—we would ban question types, not tags, if we were to ban something. It's inaccurate in a different way to even say that we banned shopping questions—we just stopped making an exception for them, and watched the default network-wide ban reasserted itself. That might seem like semantics, but that's fine because this issue is tangled with semantics and it's important to understand what did and didn't happen when we the mods executed on the overwhelming agreement that we should stop accepting shopping questions.

Since all recommendation requests are off-topic by default, if we want to host tool-recommendation questions, a new exception would have to be created. The old system did not work, and won't be restored wholesale or in part without some very persuasive arguments that it will turn out differently this time.

There's no reason we can't have a new exception, except that nothing has yet been proposed that might make them work in our format.