Timeline for List Questions - What to do with new ones
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 16, 2012 at 20:47 | comment | added | Wesley | Maybe ServerFault needs a "SysAdmins" to parallel StackOverflow's Programmers. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 20:46 | comment | added | Wesley | @ChrisS As I was thinking on this topic last night and this morning, The Workplace kept coming to mind. Also Programmers. I suspect it works for them because the entire thrust of those sites is subjective. I would say that 90% or more of every Q and A are subjective. It's built-in to that site's purpose. With us, our purpose seems to have always been less about subjective topics and more about objective "fix it" topic. It seems to me that "Broken Window Syndrome" would take effect, where there's not supposed to be glass in the ports on Programmers or TW in the first place. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:54 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | @HopelessN00b this is my thinking as well - many of our canonical questions are essentially "list of things" answers. The key is the list is relatively static, and is either comprehensive (like subnetting) or general guidelines that a competent admin can expand on (all the spam-fighting questions). Personally I feel the criteria should not be "Is this asking for a list of things?" but rather "Can I provide an answer, even a list of things with some explanation, that will have long-term value to someone else asking this question?" - Good Subjective or Bad Subjective? | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:06 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | @HopelessN00b Good point; I'll give it a bit more time. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:04 | comment | added | Chris S Mod |
As for "snubbing those topics", please see the FAQ: it is not about… Career, salary, personnel, employment, or formal education, maybe stop by The Workplace and check it out.
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| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:03 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @ChrisS Well, to be fair, you didn't really give the community a lot of time to weigh in. Midnight Saturday to noon Sunday are not exactly my prime interwebs hours, but I do agree with your perspective more than anyone else's. This strikes me as being essentially the same as any number of our canonicals (or could be with a little editing), and it seems a shame to cut it off at the knees. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:02 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | @WesleyDavid I don't intend to sound mad, a limitation of the medium I suppose. I truly am disappointed however as it's becoming more apparent that the community and I are on divergent paths. My quip about "Mr Fix It" might have been poignant, but I still think it accurate. The statistics are undeniable as well; SF has not grown since it's inception. Every other SE site has. Further we close more questions now than ever before. I wonder how our close rate compares to other SE sites. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 16:35 | comment | added | Wesley | TL;DR StackExchange does what it does, but doesn't do what it doesn't do. Don't go away mad, Chris. =( | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 16:34 | comment | added | Wesley | Truly, it seems like a wiki would be more of a fit for these kinds of subjective, but profitable topics. I know Community Wiki options in the Stack Exchange software appear to have been implemented years ago for that purpose, but in practice it just didn't seem to ever work well with the rules that developed around contributions as a result of low quality Qs and As. Wasn't there a SysAdmin-Wiki that someone made a while back? I think it was www.sysadminpedia.com but has apparently died the death. Maybe that's a telling sign? =/ | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 16:31 | comment | added | Wesley | Yes, if the community was truly snubbing those topics I wouldn't want to be a part of it either. Any body of people who are uninterested in career, training, development, etc. are just shy of toxic and will be a bad influence on anyone that frequents them. Fortunately, that's not ServerFault or any of the StackExchange sites that I'm aware of. (Also, I think lists are relatively easy to fit into the Q/A format, so could be allowed as long as people show discipline and don't pursue conversation, but that might be a little difficult. Hence my dislike of them on SF thus far.) | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 16:31 | comment | added | Wesley | The community does not appear to be snubbing the topics of Career, Training, Personal Development, or lists. Rather, I think we're acknowledging that the Q/AAAAA format of the StackExchange software does not lend itself as well to that form of discussion. That's why SE is not my only means of talking about SysAdminly topics. I have forums that I like to hang around on where the technical format allows discussion better than SE's application. I also blog and partake in other peoples' blogs where true peer review takes place. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 16:29 | comment | added | Wesley | @ChrisS To say that we're nothing but Mr. Fixits seems like a bit of a rash comment. Remember that scene in the Michael Keaton Batman movie? "Alfred! This soup is cold!" "It's gazpacho, sir." "Oh." The purpose and point of StackExchange was to ask objective questions and get objective answers. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 15:44 | vote | accept | Chris SMod | ||
| Dec 16, 2012 at 17:05 | |||||
| Dec 16, 2012 at 15:43 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | I'm honestly quite sad that the community wants to be nothing more than "Mr. Fix it for Free"; that we can't formally discuss preventative measures or continuous improvement (I didn't like when we eliminated Career, Training, and Personal Development topics either). I think we've stepped over the line, we're not even talking about what a Good SysAdmin is supposed to do anymore. We're only talking about how to fight fires... That isn't the type of SysAdmin I want to be, and I hoped the community felt the same. I'm not sure if I want to be a part of that community. | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 5:54 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | @Luke I think this general question is a good one. If I were to narrow it further I would say narrow it by server role ("What should I consider when building a {mail, database, . . . } server?"). Getting down to that fine a level of detail would invite controversy though. Obviously not all servers are created equal, and as you specialize they get substantially "less equal"... | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 5:22 | comment | added | Wesley | @ChrisS The terms "Practical" and "Chatty" define themselves outside the realm of empiricism anyway, so I guess it's just cultural consensus... ? | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 5:21 | comment | added | Canadian Luke | What about if I narrowed it down to x type of audience? One topic for Small Business users, one for Enterprise users? | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 5:19 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | I don't know that this particular question is "reasonably scoped" - "What do you check/look for/need when building a ne server" covers such a broad gamut that any real, thorough answer is going to be a novel (or endless bullet list). I DO think the answer is related to a problem the asker (and indeed, every sysadmin) faces, and it's certainly answerable (with the caveat above). | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 5:07 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | I solidly disagree on your first point. That section from the FAQ is meant to imply that the topic is so broad that common books already exist. You could take almost any topic and write a book about it if you really wanted to. The second point, I'd like to think that part of the FAQ is more of a guideline, but I admit it's an arbitrary distinction that one line is a guideline to me where another is infallible law. SO and every SE site has that same line in their FAQ, yet they allow such questions. Who decides if a question is Practical or Chatty? On what empirical basis? | |
| Dec 16, 2012 at 4:53 | history | answered | Wesley | CC BY-SA 3.0 |