Linked Questions

81 votes
9 answers
2k views

Server Fault needs professional-quality questions, not just questions from professionals

In the nearly 4 years that I’ve participated on Server Fault, it’s been a community that I’ve been proud to be a part of, and I’ve been able to build my own skill set a lot and help people out at the ...
Shane Madden's user avatar
37 votes
6 answers
3k views

Why SF is failing - the dismal future of ServerFault

This is a Canonical Question about the scope of Server Fault and the attitude of the community. This is in response to Questions to ask the SE staff regarding the future of ServerFault Why am I ...
Thomas's user avatar
  • 880
34 votes
7 answers
1k views

Questions to ask the SE staff regarding the future of ServerFault

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 ...
Chopper3's user avatar
  • 102k
29 votes
13 answers
1k views

How can we recruit and retain more talent?

Tangentially related to another meta post, the last discussion about this was a while back, so it may be time to revisit this topic. The #1 answer in the chat was money, so that and fried chicken ...
MDMoore313's user avatar
  • 5,591
29 votes
4 answers
543 views

Can non-professional administrators still ask questions about professional setups?

I by no means consider myself to be a professional network administrator. Rather, I am a systems and application programmer, and an occasional project manager. However, due to the nature of my work, ...
Jason C's user avatar
  • 128
27 votes
5 answers
628 views

I think we're overdoing "that's not professional" comments

[Most of this post blatantly ripped off from MDMarra's] https://serverfault.com/questions/590349/compiling-newer-version-of-apache-in-fedora-14 ... is the question that prompted my post, but this ...
Ward - Trying Codidact's user avatar
21 votes
4 answers
1k views

Why "professional capacity"?

This is part of a set of questions on how Server Fault defines "professional" system and network administration. For additional information, see: What IS a "professional capacity"?...
the-wabbit's user avatar
19 votes
3 answers
465 views

Refusing to give teh codez, good or bad practice?

When trying to provide an answer, I sometimes found myself hesitant to provide the exact recipe that would be a solution for a particular problem. I think it is better (it has always been better when ...
dawud's user avatar
  • 15.3k
17 votes
5 answers
915 views

Are RaspberryPi's ever on topic for ServerFault?

I'm seeing more questions to do with RaspberryPi boards. This latest one set me off: Why can't I stream more than 1 file using nginx? Is there a belief that RaspberryPis can be used in a professional ...
Wesley's user avatar
  • 32.8k
16 votes
11 answers
899 views

Should we punish and also close questions with blindingly obvious answers?

There are questions that get asked, from time to time, whose answers are fundamental and blindingly obvious to anyone with a reasonable amount of knowledge about the topic being considered, such as ...
Falcon Momot's user avatar
  • 25.3k
15 votes
16 answers
806 views

New close reasons - Proposals (July 2013)

As everyone should be aware by now, a new off-topic close dialog has been implemented network-wide. The new system offers us the opportunity to customize our off-topic close reasons, and This post is ...
15 votes
7 answers
460 views

2013 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire

In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as ...
Grace Note's user avatar
  • 101
14 votes
5 answers
564 views

Are we upvoting/downvoting questions for the right reasons?

tl;dr: in the tooltip for upvoting/downvoting of questions is the semicolon(;) considered an and/or (meaning do we upvote if it is clear and useful but no research, or upvote for research but not ...
TheCleaner's user avatar
  • 32.8k
14 votes
4 answers
365 views

What makes virtual box off topic on server fault?

Background I'm a fairly green user to server fault, and admittedly to server management. I asked this question regarding an issue with virtualbox which was placed on hold on the basis of Questions ...
KareemElashmawy's user avatar
12 votes
5 answers
626 views

Proposed change to Server Fault guidelines

Following up on the discussion here, I’d like to propose some changes to our help center guidelines to remove subjective language (particularly the “professional” part) and simplify things a bit, ...
Shane Madden's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
223 views

Line noise check, RE: our topic matter

Yes, this is an actual thing that I'm having to post. Reading a number of the recent opinion wars on meta, I really feel like it should be necessary to complete the following mental checklist before ...
Andrew B's user avatar
  • 33.1k
8 votes
4 answers
346 views

Remove "Professional" close-reason

The third close-reason is currently: Questions must be relevant to professional system administration. Server Fault is dedicated to professional system and network administrators. End user and ...
Chris S's user avatar
  • 78.2k
8 votes
2 answers
196 views

Where do I ask a question about backup of local mac and vmware fusion based prototyping environment

I am an IT pro and tend to need virtual environments for opsdev, infrastructure and development type activities that require non-functional facets like backup. A lot of my work gets done on trains so ...
Paddy Carroll's user avatar
7 votes
6 answers
222 views

What questions are on topic for ServerFault? What is the right thing to do if I asked an off-topic question?

Where can I read what kind of questions that are appropriate to ServerFault? One could think About page is such a place, but it is not. I have a couple of questions that were poorly received. I can ...
Nickolai Leschov's user avatar
4 votes
6 answers
390 views

Why are moderators/high rep users focused on narrowing the scope of SF?

As a systems admin I often come on here looking for the answer to an obscure question. The best way to get an answer to that is to have the widest audience/knowledgebase possible, not the most ...
JamesRyan's user avatar
  • 8,196
4 votes
1 answer
189 views

Should we have a "general reference" close reason?

I've been noticing an influx of questions lately which not only show a total lack of research, but are completely and thoroughly answered in the product documentation. Such questions almost always ...
Michael Hampton's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
123 views

Should there be a list of tricky "off-topic" subjects for new posters to be directed to?

It seems that some of the community here is rather hostile to new posters who don't know exactly how "professional" a question has to be in order to be accepted here as a good fit. For example, this ...
Anaksunaman's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
79 views

Where is the best place to ask question about servers but also when "learning new things"?

Being attracted from the name "ServerFault" I thought this was the best StackExchange site to ask about servers which I own with AWS. But when going through the tour and some meta questions, ...
Santosh Kumar's user avatar
0 votes
4 answers
298 views

Are we becoming too judgmental about questions relating to "professionalism"?

It seems odd to me that this question (Windows XP procedurally drop packets) is currently flagged for issues on being "professional." When did this site become so judgmental and only accept ...
Adam's user avatar
  • 205
-5 votes
3 answers
203 views

Is there recourse for abusive moderation?

I asked this question about yum and Apache, which is a perfectly fine question for this site. A site moderator stepped in and issued comments that were not helpful to answering the question as asked. ...
Alex Reynolds's user avatar
-5 votes
6 answers
348 views

Why was my edit rejected?

I suggested an edit to an answer that improved it IMO quite a bit, but not enough to merit a separate post: https://serverfault.com/review/suggested-edits/150104 It got rejected because it was "...
Flimm's user avatar
  • 500