Timeline for Server Fault needs professional-quality questions, not just questions from professionals
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
39 events
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| Jan 15, 2018 at 18:31 | comment | added | user9517 | This worked well didn't it ;) | |
| Mar 20, 2017 at 9:39 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://meta.stackoverflow.com/ with https://meta.stackoverflow.com/
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| Sep 5, 2016 at 17:59 | comment | added | user1071914 | My $0.02 on this is that the poster is correct. Many sysadmins have a (deserved) reputation as insular, near-autistic pr*cks who won't even talk to you unless you can convert ASCII characters to UTF-8 in your head. Sad to say many of them seem to hang out here, waiting for someone to innocently ask a question so the sysadmin can slap them and scream "STUPID!" That will kill this site eventually. | |
| Nov 13, 2015 at 14:24 | comment | added | Nemo | What about trends on StackOverflow, or StackExchange in general? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/269334/… | |
| Feb 12, 2015 at 14:00 | comment | added | jammypeach | 'hostile and insular reputation and a tendency to give a poor first impression' - this. as a beginner coming from a programming background, I have asked some bad questions that deserved their fate - but the atmosphere here has dissuaded me from asking more that could have been better, or contributing otherwise. I think there is a wealth of expertise here and it's a shame to see it used mostly to delete stuff that isn't considered 'professional'. I'm glad this is changing and that from the other answers, alot of others think it should change too. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 23:30 | history | edited | Shane MaddenStaffMod |
edited tags
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| Dec 9, 2014 at 23:09 | comment | added | user2284570 |
@ShaneMadden As a student, I tend to ask "unprofessional" questions just because it is on topic and it isn't on Google.But I think the professional requirement make SF different to other forums.One of the aim of SF (and others SE sites) is to build a library with answers.Allowing peoples who can post non-professional questions might just give engineers the feeling of being hotliners so they would step away from SF, resulting in professional questions being unanswered.So yes, questions likeHow to use AD GPOs in order to manage Wake on Lan?should be downvoted and closed without any comments.
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| Dec 8, 2014 at 18:59 | answer | added | JMC | timeline score: 1 | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 2:19 | comment | added | yagmoth555 Mod | I'am a new contributor, but honnestly what is laking is a small reputation point on comments, why? it's hard to isolate a server problem. You diagnostic with the user, and someone else get the answer at the end. So, next question, you skip diagnostic step. It lead to poor/guess "Answer" that will be downvoted if it's not ok. It's easy to see as moderator do more diagnostic as they care less for the points than newcomer. All that bring down the quality level IMO. | |
| Nov 29, 2014 at 18:58 | answer | added | Lorenz Meyer | timeline score: 7 | |
| Nov 28, 2014 at 20:07 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @qris It should add a link to the other question to the top of the post when it's marked as duplicate - are there cases you're seeing where that's not happening? | |
| Nov 27, 2014 at 12:10 | comment | added | qris | The way in which duplicate questions are "closed as duplicate" without providing an obvious link to the original question and answer (i.e. user experience) definitely contributes to the "rather hostile and insular reputation and a tendency to give a poor first impression." | |
| Nov 25, 2014 at 9:43 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @Sven The idea is to drop the professional requirement, since it's being used as a hammer to close a lot of questions that are perceived to be from "non-professionals", whether they're devs or sysadmins who are asking something that we think a professional wouldn't ask. We should be handling Qs on whether they're topical and answerable, instead of trying to make all questions that come in be interesting/complex problems (and punishing the ones that aren't). Using the "professional" reason how we have causes us give a bad impression to potential contributors, and doesn't stop bad questions. | |
| Nov 25, 2014 at 3:30 | comment | added | Sven |
@ShaneMadden: Can you please add an abstract to the front or a tl;dr section to the end? I think I got myself lost in all that pretty pictures (and all the rest of the eruption that the election provoked) and managed to get a completely different meaning out of your post - I thought you wanted to eliminate the "about professional system administration" requirement, but obviously you are talking about "being a professional admin" instead, which is not only something entirely different but also something I do support.
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| Nov 24, 2014 at 17:29 | comment | added | Sven | @ShaneMadden: This edits where a consequence of the problem we face for years: A steady steam of terrible questions by people who don't care at all and just want to dump their crap into the first textfield they find. Your approach doesn't help at all with this - on the contrary, I fear, as it will remove a (weak) barrier that was erected for a reason. In the end, I would like this change a whole lot more if it came together with effective tools to block crap from being published in the first place, but that would require SE to acknowledge the problem and commit to try to solve it. | |
| Nov 24, 2014 at 15:00 | answer | added | Andrew B | timeline score: 6 | |
| Nov 23, 2014 at 20:49 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod |
@Sven we have edited around our various FAQs and help texts and whatever for years now without any positive effect All of those edits have been angled toward "how can we make it clear to the people we don't want that we don't want them?" This a different approach - I understand if you have doubts about how well it'll go, but it is a different direction than what's been tried in the past.
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| Nov 23, 2014 at 15:49 | comment | added | Sven | I just want to make it known that I strongly disagree with this approach because it will not only not help attract better questions but instead it will encourage people to post even more crap. And no, I don't think we need to try it because we have edited around our various FAQs and help texts and whatever for years now without any positive effect. The only thing that would help is that SE would acknowledge that their "everyone can ask" approach isn't working everywhere and implements changes around this. The fact that you as an SE employee only came up with this tells me that won't happen. | |
| Nov 23, 2014 at 12:53 | answer | added | MDMarra | timeline score: 21 | |
| Nov 23, 2014 at 8:01 | answer | added | strugee | timeline score: 14 | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 10:33 | answer | added | Mike Pennington | timeline score: 13 | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 0:33 | comment | added | Wesley |
...and maybe that's the way the culture of the site is shifting. Maybe that's okay. Maybe we should re-write the FAQs, and mission statements, and start from the ground up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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| Nov 22, 2014 at 0:32 | comment | added | Wesley | I see that roughly 850 questions a week are being asked, but I think the most important metric is also the one that's not easily quantifiable. Sure we have 850 questions a week like we did last year, but the discussion centers around how those 850 questions are seemingly of a decreasing quality, and rightly earning their downvotes and closures. Gone are the days of casting disparaging glances at ExpertsExchange. Gone are the days of attracting experts. It seems like this has become a "think of the children!" discussion where we're supposed to onboard brand new admins and appeal to non-pros. | |
| Nov 22, 2014 at 0:02 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/ServerFault/status/535946296633610241 | ||
| Nov 21, 2014 at 21:59 | answer | added | sysadmin1138Mod | timeline score: 24 | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:24 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @TheCleaner Yeah, there will need to be some housekeeping there to prevent confusion. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:21 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @ChrisS Sounds good to me - I'd like to let this one sit a bit longer first with the high-level before we get into those specifics. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:20 | comment | added | TheCleaner | OK, last thing...when a change such as this happens what happens to any meta questions that are no longer appropriate going forward? Would they be removed to prevent confusion? Is there a way to appropriately communicate such changes to users that might search and find outdated site rules/info on meta? I'd assume the Help pages will change, but what about what we find on Meta? | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:18 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | @ShaneMadden I'd like to see that close reason and the "minimal understanding" reviewed. They feel awfully close to the same thing. Perhaps ask a new Q on mSF as to what the wording should be? | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:17 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @TheCleaner Right, that will need to be adjusted into a similarly appropriate "you're asking in the wrong place." | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 20:15 | comment | added | TheCleaner | Gotcha. If the scope is going to change, fine by me, but please bear in mind that one of the close reasons that was "promoted" to be used over move to SU was the "not professional" close reason. So I would presume that close reason goes away entirely? | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 19:56 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @TheCleaner The plan is to make a change to the wording in the scope soon. As far as the duplicates, two of those are old discussions from 2011 and the third is this question (?), this is different in that it's a "here's something I want us to try" than an attempt to clarify the old scope; consider it an announcement if that makes more sense :) | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 19:56 | answer | added | ZypherMod | timeline score: 66 | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 19:52 | comment | added | TheCleaner | I get and agree with most of your points but until SE decides to remove the "a site for system and network administrators" fundamental concept here then it seems like you're suggesting we ignore it? So what criteria do we impose based on @ChrisS "possible duplicates" above? | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 19:33 | comment | added | Chris S Mod | Possible duplicate of: meta.serverfault.com/questions/1760/… meta.serverfault.com/questions/1127/unqualified-professionals meta.serverfault.com/questions/6701/… and many more | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 18:06 | answer | added | HopelessN00b | timeline score: 7 | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 17:59 | comment | added | Shane Madden StaffMod | @Colyn1337 I'm not sure where you got that impression, can you clarify? I hope I made it clear that the expectation will still be that questions are on-topic, clear, and answerable. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 17:44 | comment | added | Colyn1337 | I was with you until I got the impression from you that SF should be SO and SU's helpdesk. | |
| Nov 21, 2014 at 17:24 | history | asked | Shane MaddenStaffMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |