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I wanted to know the reason behind the closure of this question. The reason states the question is off-topic which surprises me because I happened to read a pretty similar question again in server fault over here. The second question doesn't even have an accepted answer but it is still left open. I have asked a perfectly valid question according to the site rules and even have accepted the answer.

I do accept my second question in this site was not fitting the rules of site. However, I want to know why is my first question closed. The rules of the site clearly says,

However, if your motivation is β€œI would like others to explain ______ to me”, then you are probably OK.

So, could someone please explain why my first question is closed as off topic?

EDIT

Thanks to the moderators or the users who voted to reopen my question. I appreciate it :)

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    To be honest the question is borderline off-topic for Server Fault. It shouldn't have been closed though, maybe migrated to Super User. The details of the HTTP and DNS protocols are certainly on-topic here, but I think I would expect someone being paid to manage these systems to know basic details, like that they don't directly interact with each other. Regardless of topicality it is a well written question, so it definitely belongs somewhere, not just closed.
    – Chris S
    Dec 11, 2014 at 4:30
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    No need to edit [resolved] into your title on SE sites. There are visual indicators for questions that have accepted answers, and we prefer those to forum netiquette. :)
    – Andrew B
    Dec 11, 2014 at 6:43

2 Answers 2

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Because five users with sufficient reputation (>3000) voted to close it, it got closed.

4 gave the reason that it wasn't relevant to professional administration, one gave a different reason.

Beyond that, ans the information given in the close reason, you'd have to ask the users listed for their specific reasoning and reason(s). At least one of them is relatively active here on meta, so maybe you'll be lucky enough to have one of them chime in.

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  • Thanks for answering my question. It is really unfair for a new user like me to the site who has a perfectly valid question (fitting the site rules as I have pointed out). The other question that I have linked to, doesn't even have an accepted answer but is still left open. If the other question is gonna be left open, I don't see any reason why my question should be closed.
    – Ramesh
    Dec 11, 2014 at 2:16
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    @Ramesh <shrug> That's democracy for you. Having said that, whether it got closed or not, it got upvoted and got a bunch of good answers, so... Does it really matter that it's closed now? I've had a question closed too, and I can't say I actually care even a little. I got my answer and some fake internet points, so... so what if it's closed now? Dec 11, 2014 at 2:22
  • ha ha. I accept your point. But I feel discouraged as a relatively new user to this site. I happened to read a bunch of really interesting canonical questions from the list here. So I took every caution to make my question really valid. But if the other question is still gonna be left open, I feel really frustrated to just have my question closed.
    – Ramesh
    Dec 11, 2014 at 2:28
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My personal opinion is that people were trigger happy on the close button because the phrasing of its title suggested a disconnect in the basic understanding of the topic matter at hand. (Does HTTP get method rely on port 53 for DNS resolution?)

One way of fixing the question without closing or migrating it would have been for someone to edit the title for you. Unfortunately, there are two directions that people could run with here: they could either focus on what you spend most of your energy trying to understand (where DNS fits in with the NSS lookup process), or the actual topic you were seeking to understand, which is the how HTTP/1.1 name based virtual hosts interact with gethostbyname().

It's a sad truth that the more effort a person has to put into understanding how to "fix" your question, the more likely they are to reach for the simpler solution of closing it instead. :(

You may benefit from reading about X-Y problems if you haven't already. I've had people tell me that this is a very helpful read on getting into the right mindset for asking questions on SE in general.

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    And note that to disambiguate those two directions, we have to be able to read the OP's mind. If a question is written so it can be taken multiple ways, only the author can say which he or she originally intended.
    – MadHatter
    Dec 11, 2014 at 8:00

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