Timeline for What should Server Fault do with questions about web hosting control panels?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
58 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:33 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/ with https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/
|
|
| Apr 16, 2015 at 17:03 | history | edited | Michael HamptonMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 8 characters in body
|
| Apr 14, 2015 at 4:01 | history | edited | Michael HamptonMod |
edited tags
|
|
| Apr 10, 2015 at 20:55 | comment | added | Reaces | @BE77Y Unfortunately there are quite a few questions where the close reasons did not fit. However I have a hard time believing this is in any way caused by malice. Most of them seem to be low quality questions that did not get closed, but would have had they popped up to the front page again. And HopelessN00b unfortunately closed them with a less than ideal close reason. I believe had he taken the extra time to close each of those with a separate reason there'd be less to pick on. However i also don't think the time would have been worth it if this hadn't blown up. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 18:04 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @Hyppy Also, questions beyond a certain age display "(too old for migration)" in the close dialogue. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 17:40 | answer | added | HopelessN00b | timeline score: 14 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 17:34 | comment | added | Hyppy | @JonEricson: We could have either closed or migrated the grep one. Does U&L want a 6 year old accepted question? The 5 year old QMail/Kloxo one definitely falls into the panel category, as well as being "insufficient info". The PHP/APC one should have been migrated to SO, though do they want 4 year old answered questions about aging/unsupported software? The DirectAdmin one is an issue with a Panel-modified VPS that the user barely knew how to operate, and was also 3 years old. The last one is a very poorly written question that devolved into asking how to configure a VPS panel 3 years ago. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 17:00 | comment | added | MDMoore313 | I find that close reason confusing fwiw. I'd like one that simply points people to How to ask a good question, ideally before they even try to ask a question. That page needs to be at the fore front, whether that user comes from the internet or from another SE site. Also, it's no secret [the quality of questions has been in decline](How to ask a good question). We often joke that we're becoming tech support for SO, and if we didn't try to hammer crap questions, that's exactly how it would be. Just take a look. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:57 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @BE77Y: Here are 5 that I found: serverfault.com/q/35973/1126 serverfault.com/q/145277/1126 serverfault.com/q/342295/1126 serverfault.com/q/379318/1126 serverfault.com/q/375850/1126 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:45 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @JimB If you want to contribute a better close reason, I encourage you to do so. Having said that, we recently spent months rewriting the "unprofessional" close reason to its current state about ~"reasonable IT management practices," and IMO, have a worse, more confusing reason as a result. And why did we rewrite it? Because people who were not sysadmins under any definition of the term complained about the previous "unprofessional" close reason. We've been doing this dance (oh, it's the content, not the person, even if it really is the person) for years, and we need to stop. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:44 | comment | added | Hyppy | @JonEricson If there are specific questions that were closed unfairly, as I'm sure there were because everyone makes a mistake, then let's reopen them for the community to decide on closure. I don't see what the huge deal is or why it requires a handful of community managers to descend. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:39 | comment | added | BE77Y | @JonEricson have we seen any specific examples of the close reason being unrelated to the main thrust of the question yet? | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:36 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @RobM: No, it's not closing that I mean when I used the word "chastised". I was actually referring to the copy-and-paste comment that came with the close and the fact that the close reason seemed unrelated to the main thrust of the question. I get that using a product like cPanel complicates the question and might make it unanswerable. But it really seems dumb to train people to not mention this important bit of information for fear of reflex closures. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:33 | comment | added | Jim B | If folks want to walk away I get it- I did as well for a while. A professional sysadmin (I would expect) usually has pretty thick skin. There are a lot of folks that think they are professionals but aren't. You'd be surprised how many professional admins can't correctly answer "which of these is not a *nix command - grep, awk, sed, brp" (although now that I've posted it somebody will create a brp command just to ruin it). However if your only issue is questions from "non professionals" I'll agree to disagree but to me there has to be more to it IMHO | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:24 | comment | added | Jim B | @Hyppy,@hopelessn00b I don't disagree, we've had some dopes show up. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't somehow find a way to weed them out. I'ver stated we need a better close reason- one that can clearly say - "go google it" OR " state flat out in the close reason " your question indicates you are are inexperienced in systems administration- we wish you luck in your career but would suggest you look elsewhere for this answer or find a reference guide for the platform" | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:21 | comment | added | BE77Y | That is to say, whomever asks the question needn't be an expert on the topic(s) at hand per se, but they should certainly be a professional to participate here - and if it is clear that they are not, there should be a mechanism in place to deal with it. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:18 | comment | added | BE77Y | Just to clarify some wording from @JimB above; "I would suggest that an expert that walks away because other people can answer an "easy " question probably has other issues aside from deciding that its an experts only forum" - I think it's worth noting that there is nothing here implying that it's an "experts only" forum, merely a professionals only one. The point here is that experts who add value to the site with their responses are more likely to leave if it's overwhelmed with questions from non-professionals, and I believe responses like HopelessN00b's need to be how it's dealt with. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:11 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @JimB And to add on to Hyppy's point, this is unfair to the venom-spewing new user as well. They are understandably pissed off that they were told they need to improve their question, which they did, only to find out that they wasted their time and effort, because that wasn't really the problem. The problem was that they don't know enough to participate in the community to begin with, and Server Fault was just wasting their time and stringing them along by implying or saying that their question might be reopened if they invested some effort.. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:06 | comment | added | Hyppy | @JimB We all know that it's disingenuous to oversimplify it like that. Experts are here because they feel valued, appreciated, and to be part of a community. When they take the time out of their day to answer a question from another person, only to be met with venom, then it takes a toll on their willingness to participate. It's quite common to see a question akin to "I want to do thing X, it's not working". A common response is "X is incorrect. Try Y". This has about a 50% chance of causing a new user to jump into a profanity-laden tirade. Delete those, sure, but it still hurts. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:04 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @JimB You're welcome to dig up whatever you can find to support your position, but I'm currently in contact with a large number of the site's former respected users, and can tell you that the reasons they give for walking away or no longer contributing is that the site is a dumping ground for unprofessional questions from unprofessional users. I also took a ~one year hiatus from the site myself, so I speak from personal experience too. That cleaning up old, off-topic content has caused so much drama is extremely disheartening, and speaks to the viability of SF as a professional community. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 16:03 | comment | added | Jim B | I'm not upset that the close was for minimal understanding (and I'm not opposed to adding a "go get a sysadmin book" type response- I'm disturbed by the idea that completely different questions from the user are somehow used to evaluate the worth of the current question. I guess I thought it was a that's a bad question, but try again vs. you seem like an idiot so don't bother posting any more. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:59 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | @JimB The reason that close reason is no longer used is because it caused a lot of confusion and complaints from posters. ~"How is this off topic???? It's about my server, which has a fault... FUCK YOU JERKS!!!!" Sometimes the answer is "sorry, but we can't help you," as we've been over many times on meta, and surrounding the "minimal understanding" close reason. You may find it disturbing, but it's the honest truth. Dealing with problem users (people) is also called out as one of the primary moderator responsibilities, since normal users can get privs to deal with problem content. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:59 | comment | added | Jim B | @HopelessN00b "...and this is exactly what's been driving away the expert users for years." I would suggest that an expert that walks away because other people can answer an "easy " question probably has other issues aside from deciding that its an experts only forum | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:58 | comment | added | Hyppy | I read it as emphasizing users in contrast with sysadmins. If a person is a user in their environment, their question is usually off-topic. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:54 | comment | added | Jim B | @HopelessN00b The idea that a different question from a user (even If related) has some bearing on the quality of their current question is disturbing. I'm certainly in agreement that the question was basic ( and I agree we've decided not to do basic questions) and should be closed. You are right in that the close answers aren't simply "This question does not appear to be about server, networking, or related infrastructure administration within the scope defined in the help center" and perhaps there should be | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:48 | comment | added | Jaydles Staff | @JimB, yes we agree - I think closing often can feel bad, but that complex question isn't necessery to address here - the note essentially says that questions like this usually come from the type of people who aren't welcome here, which, as you suggest, is a pretty clear "go away." | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:47 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | ...and this is exactly what's been driving away the expert users for years. You can't swing a dead cat around here without finding a 10k+ user who has completely walked away from the site, or no longer contributes on a regular basis, and the reason stated for the departure is always related to crappy questions from people who "don't belong here." In fact, that's even the reason the Comms Room is now abandoned for all intents and purposes. A bunch of the community's high rep and respected users decided to pack it, and moved to a non Stack Exchange chat platform, for exactly this reason. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:45 | comment | added | Jaydles Staff | @HopelessN00b, we have content standards, not human standards. If you can't articulate the problem with the question without using that something is unwelcome about the person, than the question should be fine. | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:44 | comment | added | Jim B | @Jaydles - I think we are in agreement- "that was placed on these posts actively emphasized that the user isn't welcome directly" is that not a chastisement? I'm not saying its wrong, its simply clearly "go away" message | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:42 | comment | added | HopelessN00b |
@Jaydles The comment that was placed on these posts actively emphasized that the user isn't welcome directly As does this community in general, our topicality page (and other help pages), other canned close reasons and the linked discussions on why admin panels are off topic. Server Fault is for professional systems administrators. We don't want questions about your personal [whatever], or from users, and we state this clearly all over the place. That wording you object to is a combination of another moderator's statements on control panels and one of our (old) close reasons.
|
|
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:36 | comment | added | HopelessN00b |
@JimB lxadmin/kloxo is an admin panel, and if you look at that user's other questions, he is quite clearly asking another question about his system which has kloxo on it. It also a very basic question that fails the "professional" test, is a duplicate of ... well, "how do I use grep", and has attracted a large number of crappy answers. So if you don't like the admin panel closure reason, that's fine. There are multiple reasons for that question to be closed, and since there's no way to pick more than one close reason, I picked the most direct, unambiguous one. webpanel, off-topic, period.
|
|
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:31 | comment | added | Jaydles Staff |
It doesn't matter if you think closing makes users feel chastised/unwelcome or not. The comment that was placed on these posts actively emphasized that the user isn't welcome directly: ...and tend to indicate low-quality questions from *users* with insufficient knowledge for this site. (Note that the emphasis on "user" is NOT mine - it's in the robo-comment.)
|
|
| Apr 10, 2015 at 15:03 | answer | added | Jim B | timeline score: 2 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 14:43 | comment | added | Jim B | From a user perspective, I can see how putting a question on hold is chastisement unless specific actions are requested. I do fid it interesting that a question about grep (or finding strings) is somehow a control panel (serverfault.com/questions/35973/…) | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 13:38 | comment | added | MDMoore313 | possible duplicate of Is it time to kill problematic tags like cpanel, plesk, whm and webmin? | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 11:41 | comment | added | Rob Moir | I'm kind of disappointed that a Stack Exchange community manager thinks that putting a question on hold is chastising the asker, when that's fundamentally not how holding questions on Stack Exchange is supposed to work - a question on hold is one that's in the garage for repair as I recall. Or are we about to change back to calling them "closed" again? | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 11:35 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/ServerFault/status/586492654202028032 | ||
| Apr 10, 2015 at 7:17 | answer | added | Jenny D | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 2:39 | answer | added | voretaq7Mod | timeline score: 26 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 2:18 | comment | added | voretaq7 Mod | Closely related: The same discussion from three years ago | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 2:18 | answer | added | sysadmin1138Mod | timeline score: 18 | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 0:24 | comment | added | Wesley | And to me the close reason sounds to-the-point and easily interpreted. It says Control Panels are off topic, so there must be a Control Panel mentioned in the question... and there is. The fact that it's just a small percentage of the question's body is irrelevant. Kinda like no peeing in the pool. You pee just a little bit, and you gotta drain the whole thing because now it's tainted. So, win? =) | |
| Apr 10, 2015 at 0:23 | comment | added | Wesley |
@JonEricson Like all analogies there are some shortcomings, but the key to your statement is here: ...people are mentioning the key information needed to understand the situation and being chastised for it. Ahhh, but that's exactly what isn't happening. Closed questions aren't chastisement. You can't ask questions on ServerFault about weeping tile, shutter speed, or server control panels. They all get closed as being off topic, but it's not punishment. It's just not on topic.
|
|
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:58 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | @Wesley: That's an interesting analogy. My guess is that most people who come to a doctor asking about a bruise that won't heal don't know they have cancer. (And they may very well have cancer.) In this case, people are mentioning the key information needed to understand the situation and being chastised for it. Worse, the comment is non-specific. I read a question about Qmail that was closed with that comment. Without more detail, it sounds like the site thinks that Qmail is an administrator panel. | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:46 | comment | added | Michael Hampton Mod |
@JonEricson See also below my anecdote about not being able to update git on a cPanel system because of its invasive changes. These are difficult to predict in advance. There do seem to be a few questions where the control panel is truly incidental, but from my spot check they appear to be quite rare. In the case Sven cited it was because the person had installed nginx completely orthogonally to the control panel.
|
|
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:44 | comment | added | Wesley |
@JonEricson Also note that, when you say Finally, any comments left on closed questions should explain the situation in a way that a knowledgeable visitor could make sense of it seems a bit redundant, since that's precisely the category that the comments on those closed questions inhabited. But maybe I didn't have enough coffee today. =)
|
|
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:43 | comment | added | Wesley | @JonEricson Part of the rationale is that when someone asks a question, and in passing mentions that there is a control panel involved, it does taint the entire situation and make it much more difficult to offer a repeatable, standards compliant answer. Furthermore it pulls it out of the realm of professional systems administration, but I digress. Nevertheless, It's like asking "Doctor! I have a bruise that won't heal!" and then much later in the conversation glibly saying "Oh BTW I have cancer." | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:43 | comment | added | Ward - Trying Codidact Mod | For those of us who don't have 10k, you can see where Noob posted his boilerplate about Admin panels by going here: serverfault.com/users/118258/hopelessn00b?tab=activity | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:35 | answer | added | SvenMod | timeline score: 9 | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 23:30 | comment | added | Jon Ericson Staff | Looking over some of the recently closed questions, I notice many that were closed with a comment explaining "Administration panels are off topic." In more than a few cases that I looked at, the question was actually asking about something else entirely. Whatever policy you arrive at, it should be clear that merely mentioning an off-topic package does not make a question off topic. Nor should it make the asker unwelcome. Finally, any comments left on closed questions should explain the situation in a way that a knowledgeable visitor could make sense of it. | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:47 | answer | added | Michael HamptonMod | timeline score: 23 | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:28 | comment | added | Michael Hampton Mod | (And actually that's a bad example because cPanel does manage NTP, but I couldn't think of a service it doesn't manage offhand. I'm sure there must be one.) | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:25 | history | edited | Michael HamptonMod |
edited tags
|
|
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:25 | answer | added | EEAA | timeline score: 23 | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:23 | comment | added | Michael Hampton Mod | The question is not whether they are, but whether they should be, off-topic. | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:23 | comment | added | HopelessN00b | The are explicitly off topic according to the on topic page. That someone did something to provoke this discussion again ... well, says a lot about the state of this community. | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:21 | comment | added | user9517 | Close them with prejudice. | |
| Apr 9, 2015 at 21:18 | history | asked | Michael HamptonMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |