-13

At the request of Stack Exchange staff --who like the changes I have proposed-- I am posting this here for discussion.

The SF FAQ, in my opinion, is seriously flawed and really needs updating. Like it or not, newcomers will refer to the FAQ for guidance and a definition of what this site is and isn't about. The current FAQ leaves the door open for topics that some (most?) in this community don't like to see here. One such example are XAMPP posts.

Read the FAQ as a complete newcomer --you can be from Mars if you want-- and, as a guiding document, it DOES tell you that "Business Workstation operating systems, hardware, software" and networking topics belong here.

I am making these comments as an outsider. What I mean by that is that the "insiders" are obviously those who have tons of karma and have been around SF a long, long time. They "know" what they want SF to be about. And that's fine. But to an outsider the violent down-voting and "ganging-up" one seems to experience in SF is off-putting, to say the least. You have to have a very thick skin to be on the receiving end, and most people won't endure this sort of thing and just walk away, disappear.

Proposed FAQ changes

There's nothing wrong with NOT wanting topics such as XAMPP on SF. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. However, to an absolute newcomer reading the FAQ this is far from apparent. In fact, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude exactly the opposite, that such topics actually belong here. This is particularly true if you posted such topics in SO in the past and they got bumped to SF. Confusing.

How do you really narrow down the definition of this community, if, in fact, such topics are not welcome? What should the FAQ read? Here's a start:

start proposed FAQ text

ServerFault is about Production Server Software and Hardware and for the dedicated Professionals who install, support and administer them.

If your question is about:

  • Production servers, including virtualization in a production setting
  • Data Center topics (software, hardware, networking, etc.)
  • Enterprise storage, backup and disaster recovery
  • Enterprise network routers, switches, firewalls
  • Enterprise systems operations, maintenance and monitoring

and is not about:

  • Anything in a home setting
  • Anything related to software development
  • Development environments, such as XAMPP, WAMP and similar
  • Career, salary, personnel, employment, or formal education
  • Licensing, legal advice, and circumvention of security or policy
  • Unauthorized hacking, password cracking, or system misuse

Then you are in the right place to ask your question!

end proposed FAQ text

I'll leave it up to the reader to compare with the current FAQ and see just how different this definition is. Simply stated, at least as it pertains to topics such as XAMPP, nothing is left to folklore. In fact, this FAQ language very clearly establishes that SF would be about production equipment and software. That alone is a huge leap away from the current FAQ. Because, it seems, this community is having trouble with questions from specific technologies it is perfectly reasonable to at least list the most problematic ones in the FAQ in order to document the desire to exclude them.

Updating the FAQ is not enough though.

All off-topic and closed questions must be deleted. That's the only way you are going to send the right message.

All off-topic tags must be removed and blocked. You have to do this in order to prevent future postings, even from someone who hasn't read the FAQ. Topics that are known to be problematic should not have tags and nobody should be able to create a tag for them.

Ganging-up on new-comers by high-rep users must be addressed This lowers the quality of the experience a newcomer has on first contact. If you have a bunch of guys with karma in the tens of thousands gang-up on you on SF you are toast. Almost nobody would come back to a list once treated this way, and this will limit the growth of the SF community.

I only post this here because I care. If I didn't give a hoot I would have gone away on first contact. The SE staff is very professional and they care about this community. There's hope.

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  • 4
    I find it easy to believe that any SE staff would encourage you to post on SF's meta about problems with our FAQ. I find it a little more difficult to believe they'd specifically encourage a FAQ that is clearly slanted towards addressing your personal issues over one question, especially when they have already turned down our suggestions for a FAQ that more closely defined what questions were and were not on topic. With all due respect to yourself and to @shog9 I'm going to have to say citation needed on that one. I think your post would be more useful without the commentary.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 11:19
  • 6
    I've edited the post to remove some of the commentary. Whatever you think of the high-rep users here, calling out people as bullies is a personal attack and it is just going to make any reasonable debate of the points you raise impossible.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 11:31
  • 2
    A better way to consider categories like development environments, rather than 'is this question allowed' might be 'where can this question get the best answers'. Aside from anything else, it's getting away from what not to do and telling people how to get better answers to their questions.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 15:59
  • @RobM Where were you and your editing magic when high-rep users called me a troll for daring to challenge them? I think it is wrong that you edited my post. What I said may have been offensive to you but it is the truth and it needs to be discussed and addressed. In many ways you are adding yourself to the problem by attempting to suppress the message --in meta, of all places.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:21
  • @RobM Of course it is clearly slanted to address the issues I have seen, because that's all I know. How could I possibly slant it to address issues others have had that I know absolutely nothing about?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:22
  • @RobM "where can this question get the best answers". That's exactly part of the problem. Some questions (XAMPP is what I experienced) don't seem to have an accepted home anywhere. They were getting moved from SO to SF and then sometimes closed in SF. The message is very confusing.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:27
  • 1
    @martin's - Well as stated before, the SO->SF migration path is no more, so that shouldn't be an issue. If XAMPP questions are being closed on SO, then you need to raise that over on mSO.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:31
  • 7
    @martin's - you were not called a troll for challenging SF. You were called a troll for 1) your tone (accusatory, condescending, non-constructive) and 2) the fact that (after many people tried to communicate this to you) you would not acknowledge the fact that XAMPP was a dev tool. Look at this from an objective perspective: a brand new user shows up, asks an off-topic question, takes offense, and proceeds to start making demands of the community without truly taking time to understand the community first, all the while, ignoring and insulting those who were trying to clarify things for you.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:37
  • Martins - you can roll my edit back if you disagree with it, but I'd suggest you'd need to apply your own edits to the original post if you want it to be constructive. As for where I was, I wasn't adding to the 'ganging-up'...
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:54
  • @RobM "I wasn't adding to the 'ganging-up'". Well, you did, unintentionally so, but you did. While I understand that what I said might tweak some the wrong way it needs to be addressed because I feel that it is affecting the feel and personality of SF to newcomers.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:16
  • @RobM Just like USENET newsgroups --yes-- where regulars would gang-up on newcomers and beat them until they either fell in line or left. No different here. And it will lead to the same final outcome: the site will become a place for a "clan" to exists at the expense of others interested in participating and contributing. Most people aren't like me, it take a lot to intimidate me into shutting up, as these and other posts indicate. When I know I am right I can't be bullied into choosing looking at the wall: youtube.com/watch?v=4KnaU65nLr8
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:20
  • 2
    @martin's I have a question for you: Why do you care so much about a community that quite clearly isn't aligned to what you want? There's nothing wrong with not liking somewhere, but I find it very peculiar how you're so desperate to go up against those who do find it a good fit for them. If you were to enter a bar that you felt unwelcoming, would you begin a campaign to change it or would you simply move on to somewhere more fitting.
    – Dan
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:22
  • @RobM With regards to rolling back your edits, I am not sure I can do that. I don't see a button that allows me to do so. Even then, I would want to be sensitive and at least consider your suggestion to re-read and edit. I am not an ass. That said, I have spent way too much time on this subject and really need to get back to work. SF isn't so important to me that I need to win this battle. I responded to bullying by raising the point and suggesting that the FAQ, the operating rules at SF and the behavior of some of it's members needs to be looked at. I can move on now. The rest is up to you.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:26
  • 1
    @martin's you can review a question or answer's edit history, and roll it back if you have enough privs or you 'own' it by clicking on the link for 'edited <x hours ago>' at the bottom of the question. This will give you a list of the edits made and under earlier ones there should be an option to roll back the post.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:30
  • 6
    I do not agree with the proposed FAQ changes (if for no other reason than people may, against all best practices, deploy xAMP in "production"). If you have an issue with being told that inappropriately migrated questions are inappropriate then respectfully please consider yourself part of the reason we no longer accept ANY user migrations from SO. If you think there is a "bullying" problem please open a separate discussion (preferably with more than singleton examples) so we can discuss it without FAQ-Change baggage. Thanks!
    – voretaq7 Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 18:59

3 Answers 3

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Pretty much any IT related question could be on topic for serverfault if people chose to consider it so. We though, through experience and precedent have narrowed the field considerably.

The scope of serverfault is something that we struggle with continuously and it cannot adequately be conveyed by a faq. The word server for example means all things to all people and it's pretty much the same with professional.

Let's consider one fairly narrow use case - developer tools in the form of *AMP and Visual Studio. They are in many respects the same thing. One click install, a database, a webserver, programming languages etc. They are though treated differently by people who use them. We have almost no Visual Studio questions - they all get asked on Stackoverflow because everyone knows that that's the place to ask developer tools questions, if they did get asked here they'd just as likely be closed off topic as *AMP questions are. Why then do people who use *AMP think that Serverfault is the correct place to ask their developer tool question ?

Everyone can interpret the faq to suit their purpose so I don't think the faq needs to be changed. It would end up as lists of things which has already been called out.

We should though make more use of the and I'm sure this will be addressed in the near future.

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  • Folkloric interpretation of the FAQ doesn't work. You need to be more precise. Perhaps my push for this comes from being a hardware and software engineer. When I do either of those, whether it means writing code for an FPGA or, yes, server-side software, I have to be very precise or things don't run. I live in a world where definitions are important. So do you I suspect.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:32
  • How is this for an example. I come to SF to get help with an XAMPP question. No, not for my computer in the dorm but for a pro environment with a bunch of users, etc., etc. I look at the FAQ. It doesn't, in any way, say this is off-topic. I run a quick search: serverfault.com/… Wow. 566 questions on the subject. Only one of them closed. Look at the first one "lost xampp password". Clearly EVERYTHING XAMPP is OK here. Post away. Right?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:35
  • Put yourself in the shoes of a new visitor, maybe even someone who's Q was migrated here from SO. Nothing whatsoever is telling this person that, to continue along the example, XAMPP questions are off topic. Nothing. The FAQ needs to do a better job of communicating what SF is about and off-topic questions need to be shredded.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:37
  • Take another subject that "town elders" seem to indicate are off-topic here, VMWARE. Here's a quick search: serverfault.com/search?q=vmware You have over 4,000 questions there and I see a single closed question in the first 50. This, as a new visitor, tells me that VMWARE is fair-game here, when, apparently, it is not. Look at the first question in the search: "VMWare Workstation hdd issue". What's the message?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:41
  • 1
    @martin's - VMware questions are most definitely not off-topic. The sole reason the vmware tag was banned is that VMware is a company, not a product. People were using the vmware tag where they should have been using a "vmware-esxi" or "vmware-vcenter" tag. Tag banning is not an indicator of topicality. Tag bans are put in place due to repeated improper use of a tag.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:44
  • 2
    @martin's: You have misunderstood what you were told. The vmware tag had been blocked to make people tag their questions correctly with the relevant VMware product tag. Go here type vmware into the Type to find tags: [ ]
    – user9517 Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:49
  • OK, got it. On the same page, why does the XAMPP tag even show up? And, even when it shows-up, why doesn't it say in bold type "this is off-topic in SF"?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:03
  • @martin's Because that's not how the SE platform works. We didn't develop it - take that complaint over to mSO if you feel it's a big issue.
    – Dan
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:05
  • You see the problem is that the wrong message is being sent at many levels. The FAQ, despite claims otherwise, is not precise enough. To a newcomer without folklore it means something totally different than what regulars think or want SF to be about. Second, the availability of tags such as XAMPP seem to indicate that this is OK here. You have to place yourself in the shoes of a new visitor. Make him a Vulcan. What's the conclusion? Certainly not in alignment with folklore at all.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:06
  • The FAQ needs to be improved and tags need to, at the very least, be "active" in that they should warn newcomers that the subject is off-topic. This would certainly give our Vulcan friend pause.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:07
  • 2
    @martin's Tags can be created and the price we pay for being, fundamentally, a community built site is that sometimes people in the community will do things wrong. It's all but impossible to stay on top of this, and deleting tags won't cure the issue. To be honest, I don't think it's that hard to understand what's on and off topic. There will always be gray areas, and sadly, there will also be people who simply refuse to listen to what they're being told by more experienced people.
    – Dan
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:09
  • 1
    @martin's The tag-language you're looking for probably looks a lot like this one's tag-wiki.
    – sysadmin1138 Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:16
6

Your proposed text has some merit. The bullet-point about Dev environments has a lot of good points going for it, especially since that's a not-specifically-addressed topic area we get a lot of close-activity around. Personally, that's a line I'd like to see added.

But, as we learned during the previous aborted FAQ rewrite process there are certain UX guidelines we need to stay within to improve readability. One of those guidelines is bullet lists longer than 5 points don't get read. This design assumption has been baked into StackExchange since the start.

  • This is why there are never more than 5 migration-targets for a off-topic close.
  • This is why there are never more than 5 close-reasons.
  • This is why there are only 4 flag reasons.
  • This is why there are 5 tabs in the 10K tools.

Which means we need to find one of the five others to get rid of in order to add this quality newcomer, and I don't know which one to throw overboard.

The text surrounding 'production' does convey most of what our scope currently is, but given the factors surrounding FAQ-text changes and the way the consensus drifts over time a better choice would be to make the bolded professional capacity text a bolded link to a FAQ-tagged question that breaks it down. Embracing hypertextuality! I'm working on that right now.

Your points about OT question and tag handling are a out of touch with how StackExchange works as a whole. There has been a lot of traffic over on meta.stackoverflow.com over the years around ways to change OT handling. A brief history:

The first change they introduced was automatically deleting closed questions that meet certain criteria. Iain has pointed them out recently, but roughly if the question has a net score of less than 0, and has no upvoted answers, it'll get automatically deleted after a certain period of time.

The second big change was the introduction of the mod-flag badges: Marshal and Deputy. This caused users to start mining data.stackexchange.com for old off-topic questions they could OT-flag. Right after this was introduced this creates a heck of a lot of work for the moderators as we handled that flood of flags. It also weeded out a lot of old now-off-topic questions. But not all.

The third big change happened recently, and that's the addition of the \review system. This exposed the vast history of questions with a few close votes on them for review by our users. They leaped on it with glad cries, and stopped flagging everything for mod attention which is a Good Thing. This also weeded out a lot of old OT stuff, since all someone had to do to get it into the review queue is drop a close-vote on it.

  • Topic shift happens. What was topical in February 2010 may not be now. Most of May 2009 is now closed/deleted because of this.
  • We don't have any janitor processes that sweep up old off-topic questions. It's all manual. Which means we have misleadingly unclosed off-topic questions lurking in the back history.
  • Sometimes old OT questions are useful. Especially as dup-close targets.

As for tag-bans, forget it.

Tag-bans are for very narrow cases of bad tags because apparently it is not a terribly maintainable system. We have a very few of them right now

  • Because darned near everything would have it, and it has no meaning.
  • Same reason.
  • Same reason.
  • People were showing a great preference for abusing this tag. It was always paired with another vmware- tag, and didn't convey any new meaning (VMware has a lot of products, which one is being spoken of here?). And did it a lot. After a lot of lobbying, we managed to get it added to the black-list.
  • Same reason as vmware.

That's it after 3+ years of life.

Tag-bans of off-topic questions also won't help. People asking about getting told that the tag is not allowed will just tag it or something depending on where their problem is. The generally accepted way to handle OT-tags is to close so many of them that the list of questions right under the Subject line of the ask-questions screen is full of questions ending in " [closed]". This should be a hint to newcomers that they're treading in shark-infested waters.

Ganging-up on new-comers by high-rep users must be addressed.

A perfectly valid point, and one we've been struggling with ever since SF was around long enough to HAVE high-rep users with opinions. When left to their own devices sysadmins self-regulate through peer pressure, and not always gently. We as a whole have a low tolerance for stupidity, daily exposure to it being the main cause, and will roundly mock it when we find it in a peer who really should know better.

This does not make for a community that is welcoming to newcomers, or those less experienced. As with everything in StackExchange, the values of the site are set by the community in a consensus fashion. The addition of the /review system means more questions are getting closed, and closed quickly, than before it went into place and that also comes across as hostile to new users even though no words may be exchanged.

As moderators, we do pass out mod-notices to users warning them that they're drifting too far into mean territory. This is generally for persistent trends in comment tone or answers, not close-vote activity; we have no visibility into a user's close-vote activity.

We've been addressing the tone problem since shortly after SF left it's frothy beta period, and will continue to do so for as long as the site is around.

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  • Thanks for an informative answer. I have launched and run a couple of community sites for professionals in the past. I know how tough of a job it can be to deal with the crud that can come in. It can be a tedious and thankless job. I get it. The perspective I am going to ask you to have when considering FAQ language and tag bans isn't that of the kind of user who is compelled to ignore them but that of a new visitor who actually wants to become part of the community is is respectful of such rules. I'll use myself as an example with a hypothetical scenario:
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 15:58
  • The scenario is as follows: I type a new question. When I am done I go to tag it. I type a number of tags. One, let's say it's "VMWARE" or "XAMPP" happens to be on this special list of banned topics. A small modal message appears informing me that such topics are off-limits here and strongly suggests I review the FAQ or some other document. As a thoughtful user I would not just slap another random tag on the question and move on. I would research the issue and, more than likely, choose not to post it here.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:04
  • It looks like your scenarios for not wanting to implement such things as auto-magic banned-topic tags and the kind of FAQ language I am proposing is based on bad citizens rather than potentially good citizens. You have to place yourself in the shoes of an intelligent and thoughtful person who actually wants to become a part of this community. They would respond to such messages and, I would also argue, they would read more than five bullet-points. You actually want to guide newcomers who care into good citizenship. The creeps will always ignore guidelines, no matter well crafted they might be.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:07
  • With regards to the deletion of off-topic posts. The existence of questions with answers on off-topic subjects presents a mixed message. One is that, hey, I can post this here and maybe I'll have someone sneak-in an answer before it is closed. The wrong poster gets the benefit, other wrong posters see it when they visit and do the same. If I search for VMWARE or XAMPP and there's nothing. Or, even better, I get a message specifically stating that these areas are off-topic here, as a good-guy new-comer I'd refrain from posting. I think what you want is to attract more good guys.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:11
  • Off-topic questions still have SEO juice in them. SF (and maybe all of SE) has to make a decision to not prostitute the mission for the sake of the traffic off-topic Q's can generate. I have seen a "town elder" make exactly that argument here on meta. To paraphrase: let's keep closed questions because they generate traffic. In my opinion, that's a horrible double standard that sends the wrong message. Removing them is the right thing to do. At the very least remove the answers and comments so there's no real utility to them.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:15
  • 1
    *Off-topic questions still have SEO juice in them. SF (and maybe all of SE) has to make a decision to not prostitute the mission for the sake of the traffic off-topic Q's can generate. * -- absolutely. On at least one occasion I can think of, this site closed a question and it was re-opened by one of then (at the time) owners of Stack Exchange. Not everything you see here and dislike about ServerFault is actually the fault of this particular site itself or its regulars.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:33
1

Some of the suggested wording in your proposed FAQ text has merit, but if you want this proposal to get anywhere, you should edit out the excessively lengthy commentary about what you think is wrong with SF.

Some incomplete comments (consider the date!), in no particular order:

  1. The very first sentence in your proposed FAQ is wrong:

    ServerFault is about Production Server Software and Hardware and the dedicated Professionals who install, support and administer them.

    SF is not limited to Server HW and SW and it's not about the professionals who maintain them.

  2. Adding "enterprise" to the last 2 points of the "If your question is about" list doesn't improve them. I'd say it just makes them needlessly jargon-y.

  3. You left out "product and service recommendation" from the "If your question is not about list... Shopping questions are strongly generally considered off-topic on all StackExchange sites.

As to your commentary about what you think is wrong with SF...

Point 3 above and the fact that you say "All off-topic and closed questions must be deleted." makes me think that whatever communication you've had with SE staff has been cursory at best. Both of those statements go against very strongly (and repeatedly) stated SE policy.

Repeatedly stating (without specifics) that "SE staff" approve of what you're saying doesn't carry any weight. SE staff approved of the current FAQ and they could (and maybe they will) make it clear if they want it changed.

Finally, your comments about how long you've been on line are just foolish and strongly detract from your message. Lots of us have been around since before Netscape... I remember when the term "SPAM" was created for junk messages, when BITNET and !paths were just as viable as Internet addresses. Anyone who's really been around that long and actually been active on Usenet knows that Newsgroups aren't lists.

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  • Oh please, I used "lists" as a generic term. A lot of people do. With regards to the rest of your comment. I felt the commentary was important.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:24
  • "SF is not limited to Server HW and SW and it's not about the professionals who maintain them." OK, I am confused. What is it about then?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:25
  • With regards to the use of "enterprise". It's just a proposal. What term would you propose the FAQ use to clearly describe that SF is not about systems sitting on your desk? The desire of the "clan" seems to be that SF is ONLY about production "heavy iron" systems, their software, related subsystems and virtually nothing else. No office workstations or the software they run unless the software is used to run or administer the "heavy iron" is probably a reasonable extension of that.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:29
  • If you don't like the current introductory sentence and propose to replace it with "SF is about..." then you should probably figure out what it's about.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:32
  • I am asking you what it is about. I have already proposed some language. I am waiting for yours. This is part of the problem. The current definition is very slippery and full of holes and then high-reputation folk apply creative thinking to turn it into whatever they want it to be and punish those daring to post outside THEIR defnition of the site. If my language is not correct, what should it be then? Is the current definition precisely correct?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:40
  • BTW, I just edited the original post to link to the page of the SE staff member who asked me to post my take on the new FAQ language.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:41
  • Just changed "and the dedicated" to "for the dedicated". Good point. Clearer?
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:47
  • 1
    You're the one proposing a new FAQ, I'm quite satisfied with the current one. I'm simply pointing out some of the problems I see in your proposal. You can take them into account or not, as you see fit... One of the problems is that your very first sentence is wrong: SF is not limited to just Servers (what about networks!) and questions about the people who run servers are explicity off-topic according to the current FAQ and your proposal.
    – Ward - Trying Codidact Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 10:50
  • 1
    @martin's - we absolutely do not limit questions to "big iron" deployments. We actually get fairly few questions about large and/or expensive deployments. Additionally, workstation questions are on topic, as long as the question pertains to the administration of those systems by someone who is doing this professionally. Take AD software deployments for example, or group policy. Those are both workstation-oriented topics that are on topic and have been asked and answered here many times.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 15:40
  • 1
    @martin's - additionally, it seems as if you think that all we care about are these large deployments. That is not the case. In fact, many of the high-rep users (myself included) have fairly small environments. Speaking for myself, my flock can be counted on two hands. Doing things right is just as important in small deployments as it is in large deployments, so the vast majority of questions can be applied to both.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 15:43
  • @EEAA Then the message you and other are transmitting though your actions is completely off-base. There is such a thing as using tools such as XAMPP on workstations and in a professional environment. Your disdain for them causes you to interpret the FAQ as you see fit and wield the power afforded to you by means of your high ranking in an rather unfair manner.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:45
  • @EEAA The problem with your vision of SF and the way the current moderation system works is that, in the absence of a more accurate FAQ it leads to oligarchy: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy The problem, very specifically, is that the interests of SF visitors might not exactly align with the folkloric interpretation of the FAQ by high-rep users who, from the inside, shape it in their image. And so, SF reflect the views of the few rather than the many. Not sure how to solve this one other than with an accurate FAQ to start with.
    – martin's
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 16:50
  • 4
    @martin's - it's quite frustrating that you keep ignoring the facts here and ignoring (or selectively forgetting) what myself (and others) have said. If you continue that, the likelihood of any of us taking you seriously is zero. I'll try one more time to explain: XAMPP is a development tool. Yes, it can be used in a pro environment. As a dev tool. Any other usage of it goes against the XAMPP charter, is ill-advised, and non-professional and as such, is off-topic.
    – EEAA
    Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 17:02

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