My understanding is that those questions are disallowed for two reasons: one, they devolve into a kind of popularity contest, and two, the answers get stale fas

My understanding is that those questions are disallowed for two reasons: one, they devolve into a kind of popularity contest, and two, the answers get stale faster than most others. But I'm with you, they can be incredibly informative and helpful. It took a while for those types of questions to fall out of favor, so the ones you find through Google invariably date back to when the site was fresh.