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This site has a rule about not covering home configurations or systems, limiting it to IT used in a business environment.

I think it's time to rescind that rule, and allow more complex home lab questions, in the interest of getting a bigger community and more activity on the site. I'm not talking about configuring wifi routers, but somewhat more involved setups and configurations - which would probably be left open if people didn't include the magical word 'home' in the question.

In short: a slight relaxation of the rule, where it being not business related is a straight disqualification. Typical home user questions should still be redirected to appropriate sites, but not just because the word 'home' is used in the question.

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  • The difficulty is where is the line drawn? If one person's obvious home use question gets answered then the next person will expect the same and it all devolves into arguments why was x allowed and my y is not ... Broken windows is relevant.
    – user9517
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 19:24
  • Which is why I'm for rescinding the rule and rather placing more focus on the topics covered. At the other hand, I see Ward's reasons as well, which is basically arguing that if it's a good question, we should edit it to fit...
    – vidarlo
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 19:29
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    Then you just end up being Super User.
    – user9517
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 19:38
  • 1
    No, I'm not advocating allowing /basic/ questions. Rather not filter based on usage area, but complexity of questions.
    – vidarlo
    Commented Feb 13, 2022 at 21:08
  • 4
    If you can come up with an objective, unambiguous definition of "complex enough" that can be applied to the questions on SF, then it might be worth considering. Moderators already get accused of being capricious and arbitrary; we don't need "what do you mean my question wasn't complex enough?!?" too.
    – womble Mod
    Commented Feb 22, 2022 at 1:10
  • thats why i preferred serverfault.com because of the business related issues. Superuser.com has been for home abd enduser and its great
    – djdomi
    Commented Mar 21, 2022 at 17:43

1 Answer 1

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On-topic for SF used to be defined as:

related to managing computer systems in a professional capacity.

It was always hard and somewhat contentious to define what a "professional capacity" was, and the business environment close reason came from a desire to be more precise.

The current wording of that close reason is:

Questions on Server Fault must be about managing information technology systems in a business environment.

Personally, I think it makes more sense to keep the close reason. It's an easy way to justify closing Wifi router questions and other clearly consumer-grade equipment questions.

Borderline cases, where someone is asking about reasonably business-class equipment and it's incidental that it's for a complicated home setup, can usually be edited to remove the irrelevant "home" part. To me, these questions are fine.

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