Why Include "Other"?

Question

Exactly what is the purpose of including Other" as a Child Subitem in the list of Platforms?

It causes confusion, misdirection & delay to pull the necessary information from the questioner. Users should be encouraged to provide all fundamental facts from the start.

IMO, platform is just as important as product & both should include Version Number as required fields.

Answer 1

"Other" exists as a platform choice in Q&A primarily to avoid blocking users who either

• don’t know their exact platform or version, or
• have a scenario that doesn’t fit any of the predefined platform tags.

Without an "Other" option, many questions would either be mis-tagged (forcing moderators to retag) or not posted at all because the user can’t confidently choose from the list. From a site-design perspective, "Other" is a safety net that:

1. Reduces friction at question creation time (users can always pick something and post).
2. Captures edge cases and uncommon environments that aren’t worth having dedicated tags.
3. Allows the platform list to stay manageable instead of exploding into many rarely used options.

The trade-off is exactly what is described: some confusion and extra back-and-forth to clarify details. That is why many communities encourage (or require in templates) that users include platform and version in the question body, even if they pick "Other" in the UI. The tag is a coarse classifier; the post content is where precise details (including version numbers) are expected.

Requiring platform and version as structured fields for every question would improve data quality but also raises issues:

• Non-technical or new users often don’t know how to find exact version information.
• Some questions are platform-agnostic (e.g., general usage, licensing, or community-site questions) and forcing a specific platform/version would be artificial.

A common compromise is:

• Keep "Other" (and generic tags) to avoid blocking users.
• Use guidance, templates, and moderation to push for complete environment details (product + platform + version) in the question text.

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References:

• Why does Microsoft Windows rely on "volunteers" to answer questions that it should answer? - Microsoft Q&A