I posted this question earlier and was surprised that it was closed with the explanation:

"Not A Real Question: It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form."

and I asked what was wrong with the question, as it seemed rather well worded and complete in details. The only vagueness would be the lack of an answer which I sought.

It seems that the cause of the closure wasn't so much a problem with the question, as it was that I was not the administrator of the server in question.

I don't feel like my role in the question should be the grounds on which the quality of the question should be judged.

So why was this question closed? Was it a bad question? or does this site actively discourage membership?

Would it help in the future for me to start every question with my CV to prove that I perform sys admin work (though in this case, not on this server).

Or should I just take my questions to SQLServerCentral where they had no problems understanding my question and offered excellent advice on a few things to look at (which helped - you'll note I even came back here to update my question on what we figured out).

And why should I care? Mostly because I've been an active user and promoter of StackOverflow for over 3 years and have never been made to feel anything other than welcome there. I came here expecting the same sort of community and was a bit stunned and bothered by it.

I posted this question earlier and was surprised that it was closed with the explanation:

"Not A Real Question: It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form."

and I asked what was wrong with the question, as it seemed rather well worded and complete in details. The only vagueness would be the lack of an answer which I sought.

It seems that the cause of the closure wasn't so much a problem with the question, as it was that I was not the administrator of the server in question.

I don't feel like my role in the question should be the grounds on which the quality of the question should be judged.

So why was this question closed? Was it a bad question? or does this site actively discourage membership?

Would it help in the future for me to start every question with my CV to prove that I perform sys admin work (though in this case, not on this server).

Or should I just take my questions to SQLServerCentral where they had no problems understanding my question and offered excellent advice on a few things to look at (which helped - you'll note I even came back here to update my question on what we figured out).

And why should I care? Mostly because I've been an active user and promoter of StackOverflow for over 3 years and have never been made to feel anything other than welcome there. I came here expecting the same sort of community and was a bit stunned and bothered by it.