Thanks for the kind words! Maybe this can clear things up a bit:
Shopping recommendations have always been off-topic here, but there is some wiggle room for asking about tools for a given job ("What kind of camera do I need for this situation?" "Is there an an 'industry standard' microphone for my scenario?" "What do I need to look for in a mixing board for a project studio?").
While there is obviously a lot of grey area, a useful rule of thumb is to consider if the question is going to teach anything. If the question is just asking people do the thinking for you, then it's not a good question for the site, especially if it's asking for a product recommendation that might not be valid in two years. A classic example is the "What is the best X?" question, which is usually only valid at the time of asking and tends to be closed as too localized, not to mention vague - what does "best" even mean, in general?
So there's no hard-and-fast rule against recommendations, but we don't like lazy questions.
Many "recommendation" questions can be more usefully asked as "I'm interested in tool X in context Y, what do I need to consider?", especially if they're worded in a way that's likely to come up in a Google search that a beginner might use.
