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Occasionally I'm confused why a question gets closed. I was just browsing around and came across this one.

Xenserver Setup & Purchase

I'm just curios what qualified this one as "Off Topic" ?

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Had it not been closed as off-topic it could just as easily have been closed as subjective. – John Gardeniers Feb 14 '11 at 20:38
Subjective I wouldn't have questioned, shopping questions should be closed. – ErnieTheGeek Feb 14 '11 at 20:55
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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

I didn't vote on that, but I would have voted it as off-topic. It would not have been because of the home-office point. If you look back at some of my other posts on meta, I tend to one of the few that argues for keeping small business and small office questions here.

I would have voted to close because it is asking for a shopping recommendation.

Shopping recommendations are a very poor fit for this site. The are almost always extremely specific to a single person. These questions usually have no lasting value to the community or the site. A question a person asks to today about the best cheap server today, will be worthless in a couple weeks.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/

I will not vote to close a question if you can ignore the 'home office' and the question seems like a good fit for the site. I don't care to much about the actual environment, if it is good on-topic question aside from mentioning a small office. If the question is badly asked, or lacks details then I will vote to close.

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@Zor - I'm all for small office, but home office is a different story, IMO. – MDMarra Feb 14 '11 at 20:15
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@MarkM, if the question is really good or bad, aside from that distinction, does it matter? If you can edit out the '(home|small) office' from the question and the question is on-topic, I like to leave it. Although I admin good questions that are on-topic and mention a home-office setting are pretty rare. – Zoredache Feb 14 '11 at 20:20
@Zor - Thanks, thats pretty much what I was looking for. I totally agree with you and MarkM on the shopping angle, I was just curious if it was the home/office angle. – ErnieTheGeek Feb 14 '11 at 20:32
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@Ernie - you have to remember its a matter of opinion. Some people will vote to close when others will not. It's just a matter of where the 'trigger' point is for someone. – DJ Pon3 Feb 14 '11 at 20:57
@Zor - That's true, I guess the feeling I get is that there aren't a ton of relevant question from a home user, since they don't face many of the same problems that an administrator at a real business would. I suppose that I probably wouldn't vote to close a relevant question about a home server that's well worded and useful. The problem is that those questions seem to be few and far between. – MDMarra Feb 14 '11 at 21:23
@Robert - I get that, I'm just curious if more questions like this could get edited and possibly turned into real questions as opposed to just getting them closed. – ErnieTheGeek Feb 14 '11 at 21:24
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I never come on meta to be honest but I closed this purely because it was shopping and someone else thought so too. – Chopper3 Feb 15 '11 at 18:52
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up vote 5 down vote

Question:

It's going to be in my home / office

FAQ:

and it is not about …

* Networking outside the professional workplace
* Running servers at home for personal use
* General personal computer troubleshooting

Not to mention that shopping questions generally get closed as well, since it's highly subjective.

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If he had said home office, would it have still qualified as off topic? – ErnieTheGeek Feb 14 '11 at 19:35
@Ernie - I still would have voted to close it. Unless you run an entire corporation out of your home office and have an IT staff. :) – MDMarra Feb 14 '11 at 19:37
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