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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Do we consider Bitnami to fall under the cPanel close reason?
It's not exactly a cPanel-style system, but it shares the same characteristics - weird, specific, one-click configurations that are pervasive and difficult to debug and tweak.
Is it legitimate to ...
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How should we handle questions that we've given up on?
I have a couple questions that I've had to reluctantly give up on due to time/work constraints. As such, I'm not sure which of the answers to go with. How should I handle these questions?
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Happy Sysadmin day
Happy sysadmin day to all you sysadmin guys.
The occasion for you to see all the work you did, but moreover, all the passion and love we put into our so-much special job. Actually, since I'm a ...
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Is "You are all backwards" really a valid close reason?
I often see, in the close queue, questions like this one:
Understanding the Basics of Subdomains with VirtualHosts
In it, the asker (who was of course edited for formatting) is wondering why his ...
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Serial close-voting?
Is this considered a bad thing? i.e. if someone goes through a specific user's questions and casts a close vote on all (or most) of them?
...'cause I'm pretty sure someone is doing that to "Sandra." ...
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Election data breakdown
In light of our last and this election, I was wondering if it was possible to ask for a small breakdown of how the election went and what the average voter looked like.
I understand that keeping ...
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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 ...
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2013 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
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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Can we turn down the campaign heat, please?
Watching some of the moderator nomination comment threads, I get the mental image of a bucket brigade. And all the buckets contain gasoline.
I'm not terribly surprised or offended by those who are ...
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Should you answer against best practices just to answer the question?
I've come across a few questions recently where I've been torn between two moral decisions.
The first of which is to answer the question as per the standard best-practices (e.g. You should not ...
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Clarifying "Novice questions are off-topic"
One of our close reasons reads as follows:
Questions must be relevant to professional system administration. Server Fault is a site dedicated to professionals; novice questions are off-topic. ...
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Changing the site subtitle
There has been some disquiet and discussion recently about the number of poor inbound migrations to Serverfault.
One suggestion is that our subtitle
Q&A for system administrators and desktop ...
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Where do SQL questions belong?
Should questions about SQL (the language, not the server) be asked on SF or SO?
There are a reasonable number of questions about SQL already on SF but before posing any myself (quite possible due to ...
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Reminder notices about open questions
I just finished reviewing some of my answers today, to questions that are fairly old but have valid answers from multiple posters.
I thought it might be interesting to have a feature of Server Fault ...
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Duplicate tag [vms] and [openvms]
We have these two tags with the same description:
vms with 7 questions
openvms with 6 questions
One question even has both tags.
Suggestion: Make openvms the synonym of vms.
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Interpretation of Off Topic
I'm seeing a fair number of questions that are getting closed as off topic on a regular basis, I'm trying to understand why this is the case. The type of questions are those that involve desktops or ...
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What's wrong with ServerFault community?
I'm a decentely active stackexchange contributor.
I do not have massive reputation, but I consistently try to ask good questions, provide good answers, and moderate to provide my modest contibution ...
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What do I do with a question that has become irrelevant?
I asked a question (Can't connect to remote centos 7 install from at least one host) that has for whatever reason resolved itself after almost a day of not using the affected computer. I was going ...
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Is hardware assembling questions off the Server Fault's focus?
Can I ask questions related to 'assembling server racks'?
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How should we deal with "slow-motion trainwreck" questions?
So, lately, Ive been noticing more and more questions that are, for lack of a better term, "slow-motion trainwrecks." For example:
Is that OK to leave a small endless loop script running on server?
...
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Borderlines for GDPR related questions
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) affects everyone working in the field, since it extends even beyond the EU. It's a hot topic, and all kind of myths and claims are developing around it. ...
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Commenting on down votes?
It seems like we have a lot of new folks on the main site now, and every once in awhile I like to answer the "why did I get a downvote???" or "you hurt my feelings" or "you are elitists" type comments,...
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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 ...
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Should personal computer-troubleshooting questions be asked on SF?
Questions such as removing viruses or malware, help installing/uninstalling software, configuring Outlook, etc?
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Serverfault, superuser, or nowhere?
I have a question that I'd like to post, which is entirely business related, which concerns connecting a home worker to a corporate network using an ADSL router with a VPN client built in to it. The ...
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I need a script to do...!
Our community has taken a liking to re-enforcing the misconception that ServerFault is a script writing service. Examples here and here are just a couple recent threads I can point to.
I have no ...
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What are the reasons a question can/should get an upvote or downvote on Serverfault?
The Serverfault community seems to treat questions differently than other SE sites... and there definitely seems to be a "culture" or general understanding on how to treat questions that isn't ...
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Voting on the FAQ rewrite, round 2
After a successful edit round, it is time to vote on the results. The text below is the edited text we've worked on for the past week.
This will be open until UTC 0:00 Friday (3 days!) to gather ...
sysadmin1138Mod
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How do I get better answers?
How do I get better answers? Or perhaps more accurately, How can I ask better questions?
Specifically what kind of information are other system administrators looking for posters to provide in order ...
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canonical tag for canonical questions?
Does it make sense for us to have a canonical tag on non-meta to flag the canonical questions with?
I know that, for me, it would be easier to search for that tag than search for and reference the ...
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Free LOPSA Memberships
Opt-In is now closed. Thanks everyone, We will let the lucky 40 sysadmins know shortly
I'm very happy this has gone over so well, with 50 people opting in. If you didn't get a membership this time ...
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Is there anything useful I can do to help with the massive number of spam posts coming in?
It looks like today there's a huge number of spam questions being created. Other than downvoting/flagging, is there anything useful regular users can do? Are there sysadmins that are hopefully looking ...
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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 ...
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What is the best site to ask IT support questions?
Sorry if this is not appropriated to be asked here, but I would like to now what is the best site to ask questions about booting hardware and IT support in general.
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Should We Entertain Questions on Datacenter Design?
The FAQ of Serverfault states:
Server Fault is a site for system and network administrators needing
expert answers related to managing computer systems in a professional
capacity.
Does this ...
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Should I up-vote a comment pointing out I was wrong before I delete my answer?
So I was wrong. No biggie, but I want to delete my answer to save myself the embarras... I mean, to not confuse other readers! Yes, that's it.
I do appreciate being pointed at my wrong answer, does ...
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Who chooses the questions for review audit? I failed a highly debatable one
This just happened to me:
I tried to close it as off topic, as I personally don't believe this falls under system administration. For others it may be a grey area, but I think it belongs on either ...
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Creating a Canonical Question for Bulk Emailing
There are a lot of questions about bulk emailing. I was trying to find one to close Linux Mail Server Architecture for bulk mailing as, but didn't find anything.. specifically canonical..
Here's an ...
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Downvoting in response to closed question
After a question was recently closed the poster of said question started downvoting posts of everybody participating in the closure of his question.
Is such behavior considered appropriate? If not is ...
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Should questions "solved by a reboot" be closed?
Based on the comment by the OP of this question, "After a reboot, everything worked out", I flagged the question for closure. It's my understanding that we close questions that are no longer ...
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Confused about the change from "professional" to "business environment"
Take this question: https://serverfault.com/questions/657861/changing-dns-from-godaddy-to-ovh. With the old guidelines, I would have flagged the question as off-topic. The asker:
Does not know enough ...
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Reminder: Hyperlink citations are freeform text
The practical upshot is that you don't have to worry about numerical sequencing or having to rearrange things if edits are made at a later date. Definitely useful for tag wiki stuff, or any other ...
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Burninate "cheap"
Currently there are 17 questions (including this gem) which are mostly shopping related, and I would wager that any new questions created on that tag would be similar. I move that we torch cheap
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Where is the "take comment-war elsewhere" button?
I've noticed that when a comment-war sparks (2 users reply to each others comments on the same Q/A multiple times), the system stops it at some point, and links to a chat room where users can discuss ...
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"Serverfault Apprenticeships"
I don't believe the Q&A format can address every need so I've been thinking...
You know how we always blow any 'I'm a student etc.' questions out of the water? What if we could have some form of '...
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Is useful 'spam', really spam?
While Googling for a utility a few weeks ago, I came up against this question:
Automated method to convert .reg registry file to reg.exe commands
Which was exactly what I was after. However, the ...
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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 ...
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Why does downvoting affect your own reputation?
I just downvoted an answer for the first time today, and noticed that I lost 1 reputation score. Obviously 1 "point" isn't a big deal. Whoop-dee-doo!
But on a serious note, what's the reasoning ...
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In SF, when should a response be submitted as a comment and instead of an answer (and vice-versa)?
We were having a discussion about that here.
I feel like I've seen it discussed elsewhere but cannot find it. Perhaps it is different in serverfault than the rest of stackexchange?
My impression was ...
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How to handle antiquated questions
Is there a method for how to deal with questions that are no longer valid?
In my case, I asked a question which was never resolved, and I am no longer in a position where I could even test an answer ...
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