Questions to ask the SE staff regarding the future of ServerFault

Question

There is user concern regarding the direction ServerFault has been heading over the past year; in particular what some, myself included, see as a significant rise in inappropriate and bad questions from new users.

The SE team wish to discuss these concerns with us, as such a number of us held a conference call yesterday to discuss issues and possible improvements - there were also questions regarding clarification of SE's intent for the site.

We will hold this call with the SE team in the next week (date/time to be added to this question once confirmed), everyone will be invited, this question will form the basis of the agenda.

Please feel free to suggest changes to existing questions or new questions; but do it quickly, otherwise they may not be discussed on the call.

Question #1 - What do the SE team consider ServerFault is for and what do they think are the problems with the site currently?

Question #2 - What is the SE team's primary commercial focus for ServerFault (résumé's, page views etc.)? and how does this define or refine the site objectives?

Question #3 - What rôle do the SE team see for more experienced, higher-rep, committed users in ServerFault as the site matures? Do we differ in our behaviour from other SE sites?

Question #4 - Can we discuss matters that impact ServerFault only on Meta ServerFault? Having to discuss them on Meta SO makes us feel second-class is not common knowledge and doesn't naturally occur.

Question #5 - Many experienced users wish for some way to filter out poor quality questions - how does this idea fit in with SE objectives and how could this be achieved?

5.1 - Could a filter be based on OP rep and/or question length?

5.2 - Could a filter be based on question rep - i.e. opt out of negatively-voted questions?

5.3 - Would any filter be best 'awarded' for rep in the same way as other privileges?

Question #6 - Could new users be encouraged to understand the site more and post better questions if their initial view of the site was a 'best of' view - perhaps best of the week/month/quarter/ever - in terms of Q and or A rep?

Question #7 - What could be done to ensure that new users can't ignore notices regarding the site's objectives and our expectations for new users? Could we force new users to agree that they've read these before asking their first N questions, maybe even answers? Perhaps even warn them that they may see some negativity if they ignore the requirements?

7.1 - Could we even have some kind of filter to intercept questions with a big warning if they trip on certain words (such as 'home') i.e. "Are you really sure you want to post this here? ServerFault is for professional IT only, we have a great sister site for home questions at superuser.com"?

We need to emphasise that we're not being 'mean' about restricting content to pros only but wish their questions to be asked on the site most likely to garner answers.

7.2 - Could we have a system for new users where if they get no response or negative votes they could either get an email or a notice saying "Hey you've got no answer/negatives, perhaps you should edit your question with THESE areas for improvement and you might have more success"

Question #8 - The Help Center main page says "Anybody can ask a question", to some new user's that seems to suggest "Anybody can ask ANY question" - could this be reworded to clarify this point?

Question #9 - Reddit has a 'flair' status to indicate that a user is confirmed as a real expert or represents an organisation or product. Could a similar system be considered so that where we have users that work for MS/Oracle/HP etc. they can be identified as such without having to read their user profile? Perhaps we could insist on their icon being their logo and maybe have their ID as "user (of company)" - i.e. "MarkX (of Intel)".

Question #10 - Could there be a "Help me buy IT stuff" SE site, one place where we DO allow product recommendation questions - maybe even a degree of spam - so we can send that kind of question there without guilt - could/should(?) be cross site (SO/SF/SF)?

Question #11 - What is our close vote to question ratio compared to other SE sites?
(For reference SF closed 25-30% of new questions this year)

Answer 1

A "comment" on Question #7:

Usually when I close questions from new users as being off-topic (particularly when they're in the "You need to hire a consultant or something" category) I get sucked into a protracted argument about the purpose of SF. They feel they're entitled to answer from the community. They disregard their knowledge-level being too low to contribute to the site, insisting that their question is tangentially related to administration and therefor on-topic.

I see no easy fix for this problem. I repeat over and over that the site is for Questions a Professional IT Administrator would ask - and flat out ignore and semblance of reasoning or logic.

Their sense of entitlement weighs heavily in their assessment of our intentions - usually labeling us "mean" (though we've earned that title in a number of ways, this one is undue).

Answer 2

Hard problem here. There are two things that need to happen:

1. We need to improve quality.
2. We need to improve the perception of quality.

For point 1 we've done just about everything we can to do that and still stay within the StackExchange spirit of openness. Clearly, this isn't working. Fixing this improves the site overall, which we're having problems with.

For point 2 the SE spirit of openness doesn't really allow us to put perception-filters into place because all questions are equal (except if they're negative enough or on an ignored tag). Fixing this improves our experienced user retention rate, which we're having problems with.

ServerFault as we'd like it to be is not a good fit for StackExchange as it exists now. This is why we're having the call, it's time to exercise our special-snowflake status.

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Question 5: Can we please, finally, have some perception-filters already? Here are some ideas...

The big, big problem with perception filters is that they hurt absolute quality. Questions (and answers, if filters can apply to "answerers with under N points") posted by people below the common perception threshold will only be seen by others who are just as new and get no or crappy answers. This hurts our perceived quality by people who find us on Google and check us out.

Maybe that's what we actually want. Maybe we tell new users, "Hey, if you set these filters, the site isn't nearly as bad." It's still a bad site, but at least it looks nice.

If we go this route, we really should implement Question 6. Best first impressions, and all.

New Question: Can we relax the open-access rules since it has manifestly failed? This would be something like:

• A quiz that takes time to answer going over key points in the "what belongs here" part of the documentation (not something that can be NextNextNextNextFinished).
• Require the Analytical badge for posting questions.
• Others?

One of our biggest problem classes are LazyNet users who see a group of smart people on the right topic and post like it's just like any other forum full of smart people. By requiring effort to post questions, we prune out the laziest. It may even help cut down more-active-on-SO-posters, though not the well intentioned but sadly misguided ones.

Answer 3

Disclaimer: Pie in the sky. Lots of it. Bring a bib.

I have an idea RE: Q#7, but it requires backend coding to aid in "training" the user. SE is likely to resist this approach due to the unique features it would entail us having compared to other sites, but here we go anyway. Deploying pipe dream:

• A way to get small amounts of +rep for demonstrating an understanding of our on-topic subject matter:
  1. (@ChrisS) On the About page, make a 4 question "quiz" with drop down boxes. Each quiz question is worth 1 rep (so getting them right meets the requirements). The 4 question should be dead simple: "Target Audience: Professional Administrators", "Questions should have: Details & Actual Problem", "Questions about Home stuff: Off-Topic (See SU)", and "Voting: Just Do It™".
  2. (original proposal) Reading documentation about this SF's targeted subject matter provide a user with very, very small amounts of +rep. No way to prove that they actually read it though. All we can do is track that they landed on certain pages, or that they scrolled past certain points (if using about style AJAX).
• The site-wide +100 rep is ignored for SF's rep calculations.
• Users below a minimum rep cannot post questions. (5..10ish)

The end result is that questions can't be asked without faking a willingness to understand our subject matter first. Supplying a 1 or 2 good answers bypasses this obviously, but that's not a bad thing.

If I really want to crank up the pipe dream, we might allow the +100 cross-site rep if the user meets a minimum rep (say, 1000) on certain sister sites to SF (Unix.SE, SU, etc.), but I'm stretching things enough with inane feature requests as it is. SO would not be one of those sites.

Yes, I know suggestions like this are generally terrible and unlikely to be implemented. I would not be suggesting it if I did not feel strongly that this would go a long way toward modeling the correct user behavior and reducing # of bad questions.

Answer 4

OK, I've thought of one that would at least help me realize my dream that Question #5 might happen and it seems definitely doable:

So consider this either Question 12 or Question 5b:

Since there's obviously a way the system knows a question is a First Question:

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Can we simply have a FIRST-QUESTION tag that gets auto-set for a user's first question only? Then if I decided that I no longer wanted to even see these questions I could set that tag as ignored and use a Greasemonkey script like: Stack Overflow Tag Manager to truly hide these questions in the UI.

I know the overall concept is that new questions are just as welcome as any others, and I'm not denying them from asking a question nor am I imposing a setting on everyone.

Answer 5

It is a shame that the question is so loaded.

As a user (and professional sysadmin) my impression is the complete opposite, that moderators are overly critical and too quick to close questions as off topic that could be helpful to get answers to.

It gives an impression of snobbery and unfriendliness and drives people away.

Search and ratings are the best defense against junk not heavy handed moderation. In the earlier days there were many questions that looked bad but redeemed themselves or added points which could be merged into a canonical duplicate once the discussion had run its course. Nowadays these are jumped upon too quickly and the useful aspect never happens.

Also closing questions simply because the questioner mentions a dev or home setup is wrong when that question and answers could also apply to a professional environment. People need to stop and think before they flag it.

My questions therefore are...

1. can we improve search/default views to highlight better questions rather than force close/filter out bad ones (except spam/completely broken ones)?
2. can we add a time limit before questions can be closed for being off topic?
3. Have the mods/high end users lost sight of what this site is to new users/everyone else?
4. Can you reaffirm that 'what could be useful to professional sysadmins' is on topic regardless of whether the particular question is based in a dev/test/home/pro environment?

Answer 6

I didn't add these to the master list because I haven't thought them through, I don't know if they make sense:

• Increase the number of close votes and close vote reviews per day. Maybe not dramatically, but enough to boot the bad questions sooner.

• Can the automatic delete rules be changed for a single site? i.e. could they be changed here so that some of the bad questions disappear sooner? I can never remember all the auto-delete rules, but I think questions that aren't bad enough to close but not good enough to get answers linger for a long time, it might help if they went away faster.

Answer 7

Does Stack Exchange view today's ServerFault as a more hostile, insular community than other SE sites, particularly as it realtes to new users?

Potential discussion points

• Is ServerFault diverging in its tone from other successful sites
• Is there a concern that ServerFault's challenges in dealing with low-quality or non-professional questions is also driving away experts in a way not seen on other SE sites (like StackOverflow)
• Is there a sense that new user have more difficulty when joining this community (open arms, cult, "Earn respect" system, etc)
• Does SE think the community has a perception that good questions can only come from within
• How do all of these contribute to userbase growth, and does SE think this is an aspect of the site's challenges that's getting under-represented here on Meta, etc?

NOTE: I (Jaydles) undeleted this post, as I agree with the mods: it's related enough to what the goal of the question was to deserve open consideration. I'm also making edits to the phrasing to make it more consistent with the other suggested topics and to lead the witness a bit less. If the OP feels I'm misrepresenting, feel free to edit again, but my goal here was to capture your core points.