All Questions
2,171
questions
15
votes
4
answers
407
views
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 ...
15
votes
50
answers
721
views
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 ...
15
votes
3
answers
182
views
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 ...
15
votes
7
answers
450
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 ...
15
votes
2
answers
237
views
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.
15
votes
3
answers
465
views
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 ...
15
votes
2
answers
205
views
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
150
views
VirtualBox tag warning
One Stack Exchange feature which is significantly underutilized here at SF is tag warnings. These pop up when a user enters a tag into their question and can provide guidance on how to use the tag or ...
15
votes
2
answers
262
views
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 ...
15
votes
2
answers
163
views
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
382
views
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 ...
15
votes
3
answers
393
views
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
303
views
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
164
views
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 ...
15
votes
1
answer
101
views
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
15
votes
1
answer
333
views
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 ...
15
votes
3
answers
182
views
"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 '...
15
votes
1
answer
120
views
You must have 5 reputation to participate on which site again?
The meta.SF FAQ states, in part:
You must have at least 5 reputation on the main website to participate on Server Fault.
Should it not say that you must have 5 reputation on Server Fault to ...
14
votes
2
answers
542
views
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 ...
14
votes
5
answers
558
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 ...
14
votes
2
answers
904
views
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 ...
14
votes
3
answers
296
views
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 ...
14
votes
2
answers
420
views
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 ...
14
votes
2
answers
193
views
Which Header tags need beheading?
I was looking for a suitable tag for a question about the email headers my email server creates but while looking I noticed that header-related tags could probably do with a clean-up:
I'm sure there ...
14
votes
10
answers
423
views
Conferences to go to 2011 Edition
It's that time of year to start thinking about what conferences we want to beg,plead,borrow and steal to get to go to this year. We all like a good conference, but are generally limited in the funds ...
14
votes
2
answers
525
views
Is there a way to send a private message to another SF user?
Just for curiousity is there a way to send a private message through any SF facility to another SF user?
14
votes
2
answers
231
views
review test: low quality
I am a bit disappointed because I was just told that I had failed a review test. Funny though, I was going to take that one here even before I accepted that one because it was presented to me as the "...
14
votes
1
answer
349
views
Can I ask a question with a higher level of abstraction?
Can I ask about more abstract things here? For example, can I ask about why a DNS needs to be public? Or how a accessible public DNS creates a unique destination?
14
votes
2
answers
261
views
Possible project/product spamming
User lzap has just posted a rash of answers, some to very old questions, all of which look very similar:
From Automated VM's provisioning:
If you don't mind use Puppet for configuration, then ...
14
votes
8
answers
261
views
How to attract more professionals?
This topic has been discussed before but I do not believe it to be exhaustive. During the first chat beta, Jeff Atwood and I were discussing potential areas where SF could be marketed to ...
14
votes
1
answer
383
views
"Shibboleet" Easter Egg for serverfault
Would it be possible to add another Easter Egg to serverfault?
If so, we could use an easter egg that dumps anyone into chat if they type "Shibboleet" in a question.
It's obscure enough that it isn'...
14
votes
2
answers
237
views
Someone is removing the history tag. Was that discussed and should the edit be accepted or rejected?
Someone started to remove the history tag from all questions, as I see in the 'Suggested Edits' queue.
I agree that this tag is useless and should be removed. However, I don't find a discussion and ...
14
votes
3
answers
744
views
Baby light my fire [operating-system]
What a crap tag - operating-system
Agreed? If so, let's clean it up over the next few days so we can send it to war on the front line against a battalion of heavilly armed enemy soliders so that it ...
14
votes
1
answer
194
views
How should I review First Posts?
I keep finding myself inside the review queue of First Posts, and then not knowing what to do. If there are grammatical or formatting issues, those are easy - and I edit the question/answer and fix ...
14
votes
5
answers
420
views
Creating a canonical "Help, I'm Getting DDOS-ed!" question?
Another Distributed Denial of Service question (and this one) floated into the review queue. Is there any interest in creating a canonical question and answer for all of D/DOS questions that we see?
...
14
votes
3
answers
202
views
What's the etiquette for duplicate questions?
I just answered a question, and then later someone voted it down and noted that it was a duplicate.
Is there a recommended way for an "answerer" to deal with this? i.e. if I find that my answer is ...
14
votes
4
answers
357
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 ...
14
votes
2
answers
538
views
How to find and clean up bad questions
We've got lots of existing meta posts about how many bad questions there are and how much of a problem they are (or aren't) - that's not what this question is about.
I wanted to collect in one post ...
14
votes
3
answers
188
views
Ways to improve the quality of questions concerning some tags (tag-triggered suggestions?)
I'm quite new here, but I often find myself desiring there was a way to suggest people asking questions to include information probably relevant because of the tags they've used - something like "...
14
votes
1
answer
89
views
Proposals regarding the Amazon and related tags
The amazon tag is being misused in a similar manner to the vmware tag in that questions tagged amazon are not about the company but the services that they provide.
There are several related Amazon ...
14
votes
2
answers
243
views
Users with editing privileges can no longer approve edits
I noticed that a question had been posted with an egregious spelling error in its title. A low-rep user had submitted a proposed edit to correct the spelling error. Had there been no proposed edit in ...
14
votes
1
answer
219
views
Can we add "rapidssl" to the list of banned words please?
I'm sick of deleting the spam we get from their millions of 'resellers'.
13
votes
18
answers
889
views
Community Promotion Ads - 2014 [duplicate]
It's the time of the year again, namely it is December 2013, and so we shall now refresh our Community Promotion Ads for the new year.
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are ...
13
votes
10
answers
726
views
Community Promotion Ads - 2015
The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community ...
13
votes
8
answers
548
views
What should we do with questions about Vagrant?
We have, at last count, 335 questions tagged vagrant.
As far as I know, for the most part this is a tool used by developers to create developer environments, and not something that is useful in ...
13
votes
6
answers
442
views
Sure, we like the IDEA of voting, but we are poor in our actions
Referencing kce's Is ServerFault doomed? Not if we all vote more! where it was upvoted 77 times, with plenty of positive discussion, it is apparent that at least in concept the ServerFault community ...
13
votes
7
answers
67
views
Do SEO, webmaster, etc. questions belong on Server Fault?
Do questions not related directly to system administration, but rather web site administration, SEO, etc. belong on Server Fault?
Return to FAQ Index
13
votes
4
answers
374
views
Pictures of text, acceptable or not?
Every now and then I see questions (and the occasional answer) that include pictures of text, often commands and their output and similar.
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but for clarity these are the ...
13
votes
3
answers
321
views
Usefulness of [443]?
I just noticed there is a 443 tag. It is used in more than a handful of questions, but I find its name quite poorly chosen.
What to do about it? Rename? Remove?
13
votes
5
answers
779
views
Close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3
I wanted to ask if the community was interested to have the vote threshold lowered, as they did on StackOverflow (We’re lowering the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3 for good)
I ask as often ...