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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Why can't I use https to access the stackexchange sites?
In order to be more secure in my external transmissions, I tried to use https://serverfault.com and found that I could not login.
Actually I get a 403/HTTP Authentication request, but its not like ...
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Should we modify the FAQ to include policy subversion as explicitly Off Topic?
Based on some of the comments here I went and looked at the FAQ again. We've always, as far as I can remember, closed policy subversion questions as Off Topic.
The question that brought this up is ...
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What delineates a "Business Environment?"
I recently asked a question regarding troubleshooting issues when adding an ESXi host to a vCenter server. However, this question was put on hold, and suggested to be posed on SuperUser (shown below).
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What to do with an accepted answer which is plainly wrong?
Inspired by this question and this one.
In the first question, the accepted and most upvoted answer is wrong and misleading, but it looks like it has been around for a while, it somewhat works (...
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Are questions about legacy products inherently off-topic on Server Fault?
A simple yes or no question:
Are questions about legacy products inherently off-topic?
For instance we regularly get new questions about windows-server-2003 which ran out of extended support in ...
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When are legacy/unsupported systems still on-topic?
There are cases where old, barely supported or possibly unsupported server-class systems (be it software or hardware) are still being used professionally; for instance:
Low-budget operations (still ...
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Have we given up on the review queue?
I'm guilty...I've given up. I simply don't frequent SF enough anymore due to the job requirements to be a daily contributor.
But I was actually pretty shocked to see the shape the review queue is in....
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Unqualified "professionals"
We see a fairly steady stream of questions by people who for one reason or another find themselves having to do a sysadmin's work but have no experience or qualifications whatsoever. Very often they ...
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Cleaning house, really old, unloved questions
Inspired by a post on M.SU by studiohack, I'd like your thoughts on going through and cleaning up some of our old, unloved questions. I've taken a first pass at coming up with an SQL query (...
sysadmin1138Mod
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Tag merge request for Microsoft Windows Small Business Server tags
Here is a list for Microsoft Small Business Server tags that do not mention version number:
sbs x 46
sbs-server x 2
small-business-server x 96
Here is a list of all SBS tags that I can find which ...
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Ethical Questions About Hackers, Cheaters, and Lusers
Sometimes the questions asked here are related to the following three categories ...
Hackers
Yes, yes, I understand there's a fine line between a competent (grey hat) hacker and a sysadmin. But I ...
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What can we do to fix the "Reasonable management practices" close reason?
I don't like it!
Let's make it better, because it's weak.
What questions are being closed right now with it where it's not conveying what we want it to?
Are they "you're on the wrong site", "you're ...
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Changing the FAQ: Home networks
One thing I've noticed in close-voting is that if the questioner mentions that what they're doing is in their home in any way, it gets voted off-topic. If it's about the network itself, it gets ...
sysadmin1138Mod
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Community Promotion Ads - 2017
It is a bit late into this new year, being that we're already in the second month, but we are now cycling the Community Promotion Ads for 2017!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion ...
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Can we come up with a consensus opinion on Purchasing Suggestions?
In reference to 2U rack hardware, budget but stable, what to buy?
Plus many other similar questions, it has been noted that there's actually nothing in the SF FAQ about asking really localized ...
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What kind of database/DBA questions does the SF community want to keep?
It is likely that dba.stackexchange.com will be leaving beta in the near future. While the site has been in beta, questions have been migrated "only for exceptional circumstances", but that will ...
user83664
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What is the scope of server-related software questions that are considered on-topic at ServerFault?
I am a mod on StackOverflow, and we get a lot of "Belongs on ServerFault" flags there. I would like some clarification on what kind of server software questions are considered on-topic here.
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why was my question about mac mini servers closed?
I asked a question about using Mac Minis as servers. It was upvoted and then closed without comment and moved to SuperUser. Why?
I am using these Mac Minis as servers and in a professional capacity....
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What's wrong with ServerFault? [closed]
Possible Duplicate:
How do we grow the Server Fault and Super User communities?
This discussion illustrated some of the issues. Here are my thoughts on SF's problems:
There aren't enough ...
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Should we game the audit system?
By reviewing posts I have found a number of discrepancies in reviews presented by review audits, which will be visible if one pays enough attention.
So if I am sure a review is an audit rather than a ...
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2012 Moderator Election - Town Hall Chat Digest
The following is a "digest" version of the 2012 Moderator Election Town Hall Chat. The format, as described on Meta Stack Overflow, is one answer to this question for every question asked in the Town ...
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2014 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection [duplicate]
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic ...
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Why was this question kept in SF?
I flagged this question to be moved to Unix & Linux. I'm new to flagging questions and I'm not clear why it was decided that the question stay in SF.
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Voting on the FAQ rewrite
The FAQ is a very, very important document. It forms the topical-foundation of ServerFault in the way that a constitution forms the foundation of a country's legal system. Because of this, changes to ...
sysadmin1138Mod
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Homewreckers wanted! Please handle these home-use questions
Summary
ServerFault has numerous home-use questions extending far back into its history. It would be great if we could handle them all and either explicitly close them as off-topic or edit out all ...
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Review question: Retagging of old closed untagged questions
Recently, a number of old, closed questions with the tag untagged have been edited with that tag being replaced with an actual tag.
Here's an example of such an edit. The question is several years ...
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VirtualBox cleanup
This is long overdue...
There are currently 757 open questions under the virtualbox tag.
From a quick skim through some of them, it appears that the majority of them should be closed as off-topic, ...
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Do we need a long-form FAQ?
As the blowout over here suggested, people are still considering the FAQ to be the definitional document of a site. As in: the document that defines once and for all what's topical and what's not.
...
sysadmin1138Mod
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Old and useless questions bumped to home page by "Community"
I know there is a background process that bumps unanswered questions to home page; I understand the logic behind this is to give them a chance to be answered.
The problem is, this often bumps to home ...
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Vote: What level of automatic code highlighting do we want?
Now that have code highlighting enabled, we need to determine how 'automatic' it should be.
The code highlighting engine works in two ways:
Automatic inference of the language in use via the tags on ...
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What is the correct site for Version Control questions
Since we have our discussion about networking going on I want to add similar question which seems to badly overlap between SF and SO.
There are a lot of VCS questions that are asked or get bumped ...
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Where is an appropriate place to ask for server-oriented product recommendations?
I'd like to ask for specific product recommendations for server-related services (such as registrars, virtual root hosts, etc). It's a jungle out there for many of these things, and specific ...
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Is there recourse to a user making persistent trivial edits?
This user is repeatedly spamming the front page making trivial edits like this. I'm assuming he's just "farming" the Copy Editor badge, but it's unnecessary and annoying. Can a mod slap him on the ...
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is it legal for another site to skim the serverfault feed
I was doing a google search on something and found the Admin's Goodies site seems to be a live (not from the quarterly creative-commons dump, there are items less than a day old) feed of answered SF ...
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Eliminate the Career tag
Can we please eliminate the career tag? I just can't imagine a question where that tag is appropriate and still be on topic but not totally subjective (although the subjective vote has now been ...
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2011 Moderator Elections - Town Hall Chat
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Town Hall Chat session with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the ...
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Is the syntax highlighting for Code blocks useful on SF?
I know the syntax highlighting for code blocks is disabled on superuser. Do we want it disabled here as well?
It seems to me that the large majority of the time a code block is used is for log ...
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Should follow-up questions be asked in comments or on their own?
I imagine the following can't be too uncommon: someone posts a question, gets an answer, follows it, but then finds themselves with a different problem related to the same bit of code.
Should a ...
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clarification on off-topic "management interfaces"
I recently directed a user from StackOverflow to SuperUser, as they were asking a question about how to properly configure their apache-webserver (or more: why their configuration denied access to ...
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What about jobs for system administrators?
Please don't close this question as duplicate, and also please don't post answers here. This is only a pointer to remind ServerFault users that this topic is being discussed elsewhere, because it ...
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Why is reputation for bounty taken away even if nothing is awarded?
Why is reputation offered up as bounty taken away even if the bounty is never awarded? Even after offering a bounty, I received only one answer to my question. In fact, the "answer" mostly just asked ...
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Why downvote a question or answer on server fault?
FAQ says "To gain reputation, post good questions and useful answers." Is it valid to downvote an answer because it isn't useful (e.g. doesn't give enough information to help?) Or downvote a question ...
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Retaliation for my posts here on meta?
Out of the blue, one or more users downvotes a bunch of my old, dormant, threads.
What is going on here? (note, the issue continues beyond the timeframe shown in the shot below)
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Can anything be done about mods robo-rejecting edits that are objective improvements?
I donated about an hour or two of my time improving questions (and a few answers) here.
I removed words from titles that aren't allowed.
I fixed spelling problems in titles.
I removed extraneous ...
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Honeypotting Serverfault for questions that should not be asked! Should this stop?
A recent thread of mine on ServerFault has raised an eyebrow regarding the lack of support for server software, which i was intentionally misled here due to search results on google hooking into all ...
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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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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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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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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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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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