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I've been thinking about this for a while. There are a couple of things I'm seeing:

  • The types of questions being asked. Really, most of these are just barely not programming releated (mod_rewrite questions) or barely not superuser questions (how do I configure xyz web server to serve pages). At times it seems as if ServerFault should be called WebServerFault. And then there are the questions with very little detail and no response to the added detail.

So, how do we fix these? Honestly I'm not sure. I guess the answer would be to attract good sysadmins. How to that that, well that is the 10000$ question isn't it.

I do have a suggestion for the no response to requests for more information. At least on SF make the notifications non-lazy. I know this is done intentionally, but i don't know if that way of working is the best for a site for sysadmins who need more of a back and forth.

  • "The ServerFault Community" I really think that having meta bet the overriding discussion about site is really working. Part of SO is the fact that there is a strong community on meta shaping what SO is. From what I have seen on meta SF questions get almost "silly children" type treatment when it has anything to do with how SF is as a community.

The issue that I see here, is that SysAdmins and Programmers think differently. So when the community here considers things, they consider it from the perspective of a programmer. Which isn't a knock against you guys it's just the way we are and has created this great community.

How to fix this, well this is where the challenge comes. The powers that be at SO have decided that a meta.serverfault.com is not a good idea. I've heard explainations both ways some I agree with and some I think just arn't working. So here is what I propose:

  • meta.stackoverflow.com - discussion about stackoverflow and the stackoverflow engine. A place that SO people can go to develop the SO community, as well as for stackoverflow engine discussion across the Trilogy.
  • community.serverfault.com - discussion about serverfault. A place where SF Admins can go and work together to develop a community that works for sysadmins. I really think that SF having it's own place to develop a real community will gain bigger rewards than trying to stuff it into what SO has already built on Meta.