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As others have said, I think the main point here is the difference between a connoisseur of a genre who makes very subtle distinctions in "sub-traits" and someone who is just trying to avoid broad themes entirely and doesn't care about these kinds of minute distinctions.
In other words, there's "harem anime" as a broad category that probably encompasses hundreds of works that can all be vaguely defined as "many eligible suitors fight over the romantic attention of one protagonist."
But then for people who people who've watched many of these shows, calling them all "harem" isn't precise enough because there are differences in the way the stories progress and resolve that make them distinct from one another. So this is where "harem" can actually be a "sub-category." (For people who really get into it, you get into distinctions between "true harem" vs. "false harem," whether it's really a love triangle or a harem, and so on.) People on this level don't think of these shows as belonging to a "harem anime" super-category anymore because they look at things in a much more granular way.
I think the problem with the premise here is that, when you ask for recommendations, some people might assume that you've already done broad research and understand the overall nature of the work enough to have accepted the "big picture" of what it's about. So when asking about a trait like "harem" or "OP protagonist" or whatever, they may assume you're not talking about the broad "super-category" level, but about the sub-trait minutia level -- the level of detail they are interested in as connoisseurs of the genre that distinguish broadly similar works from each other. I doubt it's out of some sort of intent to mislead or deceive. At worst people might not want to scare you off by having you assume it falls into the worst stereotypes of the traits someone's concerned about, but they may discount how bad it still is to people who really dislike that trait.
In the end, if you want an objective judgement on something, probably need more diversity of opinion than just existing fans of the work. You'd probably also want to hear the opinion of people who didn't like it, just to understand their reasons and see if it seems like a concern for you or not. Otherwise, can do more research on your own or give it the classic three-episode try. You're the only real judge of whether something will annoy you or not.
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