Our shopping recommendation off-topic close reason is too generic

Question

The off topic close reason for shopping questions is this:

“Shopping” questions and other recommendation requests are off-topic, but can be asked on any one of a number of role-playing games discussion forums. For more information, see Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic, Revisited.

The "and other recommendation requests" bit is over-broad. We need to rephrase.

Recommendations of games, published adventures, and tools went off topic. A great deal of other kinds of recommendation requests are still totally on topic: character build questions and social trouble questions very often involve recommendations or outright request them and are not off topic, but sound like they are.

However the overbroad phrasing is a bit sloppy and is impacting other things occasionally. Most recently, it was suggested the wording means podcasts requests are off topic. Those were never in the game-rec scope that we removed the rules for, and are just generally covered by Good Subjective, Bad Subjective.

The shopping questions blog posts expresses three patterns: "what should I buy?" (hugely problematic), "what's the best option meeting Y criteria?" (better, avoids most problems) "how can I tell what a good option is?" (best), from worst to best in that order. Many of our existing, good, on-topic types of recommendations fit the middle scenario, and many are for games for which material is still being released (like D&D 5e and Pathfinder) so they share the exact same kind of problems. We haven't ruled that entire pattern of shopping questions off topic.

I'd like to tighten up the wording to be more specific, but apparently there's a 400 character limit and this one's 426:

“Shopping” questions are off topic, which covers recommendations of games, supplement products and published adventures, as well as requests specifically for assistive tools. These can be asked on any one of a number of role-playing games discussion forums. For more information, see Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic, Revisited.

Is there a fitting & accurate description we can use?

Code for the original/current version:

“Shopping” questions and other recommendation requests are off-topic, but can be asked on any one of a number of [role-playing games discussion forums](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5449). For more information, see [Are Game Recommendation Questions On Topic, Revisited](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5747).

Answer 1

I like your new wording. Change

...any one of a number of role-playing games discussion forums

to

...most RPG discussion forums

and the 26 characters you need saved are saved at a minimal loss of quality.

I think that custom close reasons are the way to go even if they are entirely covered by existing reasons if they tell our users (especially casual/first time visitors) what's actually going on more effectively, and I think this should stay and be edited as our policy changes.

Answer 2

I think the custom close reason might actually be unnecessary. Every question correctly closeable with the "shopping" custom reason can be closed as either "purely opinion-based" if it's looking for recommendations that are all equally correct (and hence unvotable) or "too broad" if it's hoping to compile a list. The class of questions you're legit concerned might be caught in the overly-broad net of "other recommendations" aren't purely opinion-based nor usually soliciting a list, so our standard close reasons are ironically more precise than the custom reason.

The advantage of the custom reason is to convey that we really do follow the network standard ban on "what should I get/read/watch/play next" questions. In practice that seems to have mostly been useful to convey it to our own regulars, but that purpose has been fairly well served by now. If the wording of the custom close reason is creating more problems and arguments about what it de jure means than it is solving, then it may have outlived its usefulness.