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I'm trying to understand why my question was closed, in the comments it mentioned that I didn't put much effort into it, and that's false for reasons I'll go into below, and its also marked as off-topic, which makes no sense, but yet it was closed as off topic by 5 separate people, and commented on by a 6th.

Here's a direct link to the question: Is there a powershell way to update my Windows build?

Reasons I feel the question should have stayed open:

  • First reason I feel it is on topic: the first bullet point of our accepted topic list mentions managing the software of servers and workstations; this question was about how to manage updates to software on both workstations and servers.
  • The second reason I feel it is on topic: is from our second bullet point of our accepted topic list, which mentions tools used for automating the first bullet point. I asked a question about Powershell, a tool that you can use to automated software and hardware management on Windows platforms.
  • The comment mentions that I didn't put in much effort, I did mention that my current process is that I need to download ISO's from unofficial sources found through Google; automating that is too time-intensive. I can't think of a good way to automate it without encountering some extremely difficult problems, or having to manually find the ISO, download it, and provide it to my script every time, which defeats most of the reasons for automating it.
  • Also the comment mentions a manual way of coding my own Powershell command, when that's not what I asked, I asked if anyone knew of an equivalent Powershell command, or an official way to do it, similar to how Microsoft and Windows updates are applied.
  • The close reasons says that it would attract "low quality, opinionated and spam answers, and the answers become obsolete quickly"; the official Powershell modules haven't changed much in years, and most of the WMI answers are still relevant, even though its been updated.
  • The close reasons also mention "Questions that relate to unsupported hardware or software platforms or unmaintained environment"; as far as I'm aware, Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 (and this also applies to Windows Server 2016), are supported environments? I can't imagine they aren't?
  • I've had one suggestion that my question would be better suited for Super User, but the inability to accept Automatic flights due to being in a corporate environment, directly places it as off-topic on Super User.
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    Also, your question is specifically about Windows Insider builds. I suspect several people reacted negatively to your question for exactly this reason. Dec 27, 2018 at 17:05
  • re-reading over our scope though "Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology systems in a business environment." this clearly falls in the broad scope, and it doesn't say anything about supported environments in our scope, where can we even find a list of that? Dec 27, 2018 at 20:25
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    I'm a Linux admin so I didn't vote on your question. I just raised the possibility that this is what people were thinking. Dec 27, 2018 at 20:58

2 Answers 2

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If I had been involved in closing this, it would have been for "unreasonable business information technology management practices".

You know all those firewalls, proxies, etc that you were bemoaning? It suggests to me that your company takes (at least the appearance of) security somewhat seriously. Meanwhile, you're downloading random ISOs from, as you call it, "shady sites", and bringing them into your corporate environment. Your labs probably have more malware running around in them than POTUS' iPhone by this point.

You need to stop doing that, and instead go talk to the people responsible for your network setup and figure out how to get things configured so that you can do what you need to do. If they don't already know that you're installing OSes from untrusted locations, be prepared for some looks of abject horror as the realisation dawns on them that they'll probably have to take off and nuke the labs from orbit. It'll be the only way to be sure.

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    The extensive edit to the question seems to have clarified the situation. It is for sure Off Topic for Server fault on the grounds of bypassing security.
    – user9517
    Dec 27, 2018 at 22:19
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    Ah, I see the initial question was a straight-up product request, which then morphed into "how do I pwn my company's network automatically?"
    – womble Mod
    Dec 28, 2018 at 0:19
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I didn’t voted to close, but keep in mind Microsoft discourage the use of Insider’s build inside production environment.

As such Insider build can’t be delivered by WSUS, and force a manual intervention.

For such reason I can understand the close, as Insider build are supposed to be used in lab only, and need a manual intervention to upgrade.

If you need to use an insider build, please state it, as we fall into a topic that Microsoft don’t support, and don’t want to support

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  • That sort of makes sense, but now we fall into a problem; this is clearly not supported by the Super User community, because it's a corporate environment, but it's not supported by Server Fault, cause its an insider build. Does this mean I cannot ask this question anywhere on Stack Exchange? Dec 27, 2018 at 20:20
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    If you have a reason to deploy a insider build in production, having the why would help for the unclear reason, but it might leave only the feedback hub to ask for the support
    – yagmoth555 Mod
    Dec 27, 2018 at 20:22

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