contesting an off-topic designation

Question

Regarding: Linux: how to send new lines in log files to remote syslog?

Reasons given for putting the above topic on hold, and my explanation of why it is invalid following each:

1. "You are not the sysadmin of the box". I am sysadmin of other boxes here, including the splunk server to which I want the logs to go to. I may be able to make a case to acquiring sudo privilege on the box in question, but it depends on me doing research and proving it's necesssary beforehand. Hence the question I posted. A person who is employed as a sysadmin, does not necessarily have root on all the boxes that he or she needs to interact with, but often finds they need to understand and implement things on those boxes.

2. "Talk to the admins! It's likely they already have a solution." You are jumping to conclusions. In fact, it makes me wonder whether you are living on cloud 9, because reality is that most likely they DON'T have a solution. And in fact in my case, they don't, and it will take major hoops to jump to try and prod them into implementing a solution, because node.js is a fairly recent addition here.

For context I work in a large internet company here in the Valley and things are so departmentalized that it can literally take two or three days just to find who is the right person to talk to. Often, when you seek out someone for help, your request is more likely to receive attention if you have done your homework beforehand and can present a clear case. THis is the reality of working in a place where you are in charge of only a small portion of the infrastructure.

The question I posted is a valid scenario that I am currently tasked with at my job. My reason for coming to serverfault is because I am unable to find what I need through googling, and I'm sure there's other sysadmins who have faced similiar issues and can suggest solutions. Honestly, what's so "off topic" about that?

Answer 1

I started to leave this as another comment in your linked question, but it was getting to be on the long side so this is probably a better place.

In reply to "All this tells us is that someone is trying to force the wrong team to implement the fix.", you answered:

Such as it may be, one has to work with it.

This is where we get into the grey area of professionalism as ServerFault sees it. Yes, you work for a large company, and they are making you do something that you shouldn't. You are a professional. What is being asked of you isn't, and some would say that your duty as a professional is to dog the point that it wouldn't be professional of you to do this. Let's skip over that, because like you said, sometimes we're just stuck with situations like this.

What has to be decided is who an answer is going to be useful to. In this case that is most likely to be:

1. Other people in your position.
2. People who incidentally learn something in passing from reading the Q&A.
3. By far the most likely: unprofessional people trying to implement unprofessional things.

RE #3, SF tries very hard not to appeal to that sort, and that's sorta where your question dies in the water. It's crappy that you're stuck in this position and that your question isn't likely to get much help here, but I honestly think you're more likely to get more mileage at this point by voluntarily migrating it over to unix.SE. (or superuser, but I think better of your position than that)

It's not so much trying to punish you as steer you toward the people most likely to provide answers in a "just make it work" academic exercise.

Answer 2

The first part of your question:

"Anyone know of some software for linux"

is likely the reason for the 2 "Shopping" close votes (product, service, or learning material recommendations) as it is Off-Topic to ask for software recommendations directly. They usually slide by if you simply don't ask for software recommendations and the answers simply point to software that will fix the issue at hand. So changing that part to read something like "Anyone know a way in linux... " would have helped there.

The rest seems to be on-topic.

I agree that it is a little silly to close it after discovering you aren't the admin of the box, but at the same time you have to understand that the user's that voted to close it at that point for that reason see a lot of questions where even a valid solution can become a moot point because the OP simply doesn't have the means to act on the answer/advice given.

It could also be considered more on topic for unix.stackexchange.com since you aren't necessarily the sysadmin of the box, but that's semantics at this point.

But you've made your point and I think the question (after some minor edits) is worth a re-open vote.

Answer 3

I would tend to agree that this question is on-topic, but it is poorly written in its current form (you're asking us for a product recommendation. Google does product recommendations, Server Fault does Solutions -- you should be telling us your problem and what you've tried to solve it so far. I will make some edits to your question shortly to help it fit better with Server Fault's format.

The Server Fault community is, for better or worse, somewhat aggressive at closing "product recommendation" and "not really the admin" questions. Neither fits our target scope or audience. The way your question was originally phrased makes it appear to be both of those things, so it's part of the collateral damage of trying to keep this community from degrading into "tech support for the interwebs".