Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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What are the canonical answers we've discovered over the years?
We've created, appointed, or otherwise identified certain question/answer pairs that are the canonical answer for certain problems. These are answers where the community has said all it is going to ...
sysadmin1138Mod
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What to do with the "rm -rf" hoax question
It turns out the the recent question regarding the misuse of rm -rf in Ansible was actually just a hoax (English) in some kind of viral marketing effort. It become quite famous on various media and ...
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Is ServerFault doomed? Not if we all vote more!
To sum up a lot of the threads and comments on Meta.SF: We're doooomed!
That seems to be the consensus. Look at some of the answers and comments in Why the major FAQ/help change? and Can we do ...
user62491
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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 ...
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Rest in peace, Michael Hampton
Several social media posts from people who knew Michael Hampton dated around October 5 and an Ever Loved obituary dated October 1 state that he has passed away.
Here on Server Fault, where he was ...
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Why the hostility?
The comment thread and reaction to the original poster of this question was completely out-of-line.
https://serverfault.com/questions/494996/what-are-the-bare-essentials-to-make-ubuntu-production-...
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Where can I ask questions that aren't IT questions?
Thank you for your confidence in our abilities
But have you read this FAQ?
We get a lot of interesting technical questions on here, but Server Fault is meant to be first and foremost a resource for ...
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Some parting thoughts... and apologies for the drama
First off, I know I said and take the weekend, but it turns out I don't need it, and it does seem like a dick move to let things keep going on as they have, when there's no benefit from doing so. As ...
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I will no longer be moderating SF
A few months ago I took a break from moderating and participating in SF for reasons mostly unrelated to today's post. I am not entirely 100% satisfied with the way that turned out, but I am cautiously ...
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Abrupt change in moderation staff?
Myself and a few others just noticed that HopelessN00b and Chris S are no longer listed as moderators. What is the story behind this?
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How can I ask better questions on Server Fault?
This is a Canonical Question / FAQ Candidate to help our new users ask better questions,
and hopefully get better answers. Similar questions:
How do I get better answers?
How can I get people to ...
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Labor action notice
Today, 5th June, is the beginning of a strike by many StackExchange moderators over the recent policy announcement by StackExchange staff around handling AI and Large Language Model (LLM) generated ...
sysadmin1138Mod
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ServerFault Fundamentalism
There has been a shift in tone in ServerFault over the last few years. When it started, the focus seemed to be on providing an open resource for professional admins to help figure out problems. Now ...
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What IS a "professional capacity"?
This is part of a set of questions on how Server Fault defines "professional" system and network administration. For additional information, see:
Why "professional capacity"?
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Frustration when the OP doesn't "get it"
What can you do to prevent going down the rabbit-hole of answering a question where the original poster just doesn't get it?
Questions that seem innocuous or should have a straightforward answer ...
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Should Server Fault be removed from Stack Overflow's migration list?
At the end of October, Shog9 said:
If SO migrations are truly a problem, then you get removed as a migration target completely. No user migrations, period.
as a response to this m.SO question ...
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What information should I include or obfuscate in my posts?
This is a Canonical Question about the privacy of Server Fault and the needed detail to get an answer from the community.
Is there any information other than a password that would be considered a ...
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I think we're overdoing "get a new job" recommendations in comments
Is that OK to leave a small endless loop script running on server?
Powershell assistance for Active Directory Cleanup
Those are two examples that I've seen in the last day. Neither of which deal ...
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PART 1 What is all the drama on meta.SE about?
If you follow meta.stackexchange (meta.SE), you'll have seen the huge number of posts about the new Code of Conduct (CoC), about Monica Cellio being removed as a moderator from multiple sites, about ...
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Getting a bit too snarky
Can people stop being quite so snarky when answering questions please? There has been a noticeable increase in answers that begin with snarky/preachy statements followed by an answer, as well as ...
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On the paucity of voting
paucity
ˈpɔːsɪti
noun
the presence of something in only small or insufficient quantities or amounts.
"a paucity of information"
The active community on Server Fault is tiny, most people ...
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Mod hammering - to do or not to do
One topic I am seeing a lot of the election page, and in meta threads, and in the site in general, is the idea that moderators should be running around slamming close votes on every question that ...
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Is this the kind of language we should be promoting on SF
Today we had someone ask a question regarding a discussion they had had with their manager. For all we know they may want to show their manager the answers they got here. Unfortunately the text below ...
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Where can I ask questions about web hosting control panels?
My question was closed as off-topic because it is "about a web hosting control panel". But I still need help. Where can I ask my question?
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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 ...
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Happy X-Mas to all!
I take 2 minute to wish a good xmas and holiday season to all!!
yagmoth555Mod
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What to do about external rep scamming
I've come across an example of reputation gaming on VMware Communities where users are using ServerFault to boost reputation over there by asking questions here. We've discussed the pattern of ...
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2013 Moderator Election Results
Server Fault's third moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the two new moderators are:
They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for ...
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Change style of Links
There's already a question for this, I tried to "bump" it with a comment, but it didn't show up on the Active Page.
Can we setup a different style for links on the Server Fault page to make the link ...
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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 ...
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Should folks have to click through an interstitial page to ask questions on Server Fault?
A few weeks back, Jay and I had a nice conversation with voretaq7 and Chopper3 where we discussed and debated the various items raised by the community here in http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/...
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Why the major FAQ/help change?
We get a LOT of seriously off-topic questions on ServerFault.
This is because new users either can't comprehend the word 'server' in the site name or because they skipped the old, and very clear, FAQ....
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Paddington Bear Choppertar
Many of our top users seem to have avatars with a picture of themselves in a car with what appears to me to be Paddington Bear:
So what is the story behind this?
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PART 2: How does the drama on meta.SE affect Server Fault?
Reduced moderation
To start with, two of the moderators on Server Fault have drastically curtailed their activity on the site.
Michael Hampton: "After catching up on this situation, including today'...
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"Server Fault is for system administrators... in a professional capacity"
I'm interested in soliciting opinions on the meaning of the phrase from the FAQ in the question title. I've just returned from an extended hiatus from SF, and I'm finding that a lot of the things ...
wombleMod
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I'm challenging us to make the Christmas 2014 season be known as "killing them with kindness"
EDIT: IT'S OVER...hopefully it helped some...now to continue on down the road...
tl;dr? Just see the bold...
After reading both of these meta questions:
Why is the Server Fault community so ...
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The Server Fault Wiki of recommended practices
So I've noticed that there are several recommendations on basic practices on Server Fault, but there doesn't seem to be a cohesive view as to how those recommendations would all fit together. So I ...
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Worse than usenet? Our image to prospective new users.
Last week, I spoke to a colleague who had some problems where he asked me for help but I didn't knew an immediate answer. I suggested to ask a question on ServerFault, but he denied, claiming this ...
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Any way around this: "Edits must be at least 6 characters; is there something else to improve in this post?"
See the accepted answer on this question: Give user-creation privileges to a user
There's a small mistake (my fault): the .should be *.*. Changing that is only two characters. There's nothing else ...
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How to handle situations where a user needs professional support and you are willing to provide it?
This has happened to me several times already, and I think I'm not the only one.
A (possibly new) user comes by with a question which clearly shows he is way out of his depth and he needs ...
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Site design update is now live
Hello Server Fault community,
I want to give you a heads up that I'll be making some minor design updates to SF site design to reflect recent changes on Stack Overflow and Super User. Visually it ...
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Can we do anything to change the dynamic of the site?
This came up in relation to the upcoming mod election, e.g. Dennis' question here, and tombull89's and Iain's comments here, but I think the discussion of this shouldn't be limited to "what do the the ...
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How do you define "sysadmin related"?
I'm done with Serverfault. When people can't see outside their own little box of what's system admin related they're not worth me wasting my time.
This question/COMMUNITY WIKI is related to OUR ...
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Answer questions from low reputation users
I have been spending a lot of time Serverfault lately trying to first educate myself, second see if i can be helpful and thirdly bring up my own reputation.
I notice 2 things:
When a user with a low ...
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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, ...
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Why does the careers 2.0 site cater to programmers only?
Apparently, I'd need an invitation to create a profile there. That's fine, I've been around stackoverflow, got a bit of score on SF, shouldn't be a problem, right? Moreover, there are career postings ...
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Let us (continue to) close old, off-topic questions about web hosting control panels
I'm not going to rehash all the drama of the last few days surrounding our former moderator HopelessN00b's mass closing of old, off-topic questions about web hosting control panels, but something ...
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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 ...
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Is it time to kill problematic tags like cpanel, plesk, whm and webmin?
Given the recent uptick in new users with new questions, I've been noticing an even sharper-than-normal decline in quality on the site and a correlated increase in the number of questions about how to ...
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It's Santa Time!
Let's do this. What with the DramaLlama being out in full force, I think it's time to take a breather and bring the funny back. To wit: I propose the Santification of your gravatars till after the new ...