All Questions
2,169
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13
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2
answers
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Are "Help me get [X] to compile!" questions off-topic?
Many of our migrations from Stack Overflow are questions asking for help compiling a particular piece of software (recent example: https://serverfault.com/questions/440591/error-with-...
- 79k
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votes
3
answers
494
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crossposting: How to deal with question asked twice on other stack exchange sites?
I have noticed a user asking the exact same question both on serverfault and stackoverflow. I'm referring to this question:
stackoverflow: importerror-no-module-named-xhaus-python-module-importing-...
- 8,536
13
votes
3
answers
356
views
Need to either significantly improve a poorly asked+answered old question; or to re-ask (duplicate) it properly
I have basically this question. But that 2012 post doesn't work for multiple reasons:
The OP has forgotten to add good reasons legitimising his request. That lead to the usual avalanche of downvotes ...
- 3,142
13
votes
1
answer
396
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Should I edit my old unanswered question or start a new one?
I have posted a question four months ago which could not be answered because of missing information on my side. I have now collected additional data (network monitoring diagrams that prove the problem)...
- 1,336
13
votes
8
answers
2k
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Binaries: where to host them?
After seeing this question exposing a particulary bad choice for a file hoster to place a PCAP dump on, I wondered what the current options are. As I see it, the hosting service needs to be
easily ...
- 40.2k
13
votes
1
answer
433
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Should the "Ask Question" process warn that we require a professional context?
Recently, there was a popular Meta question concerning changing the site subtitle to prevent inbound migrations of off-topic questions.
The old site subtitle was:
Q&A for system administrators ...
- 14.1k
13
votes
2
answers
130
views
Editing an answer by adding significant new content?
I have seen a number of edits on the review screens that are adding a significant amount of new content, items which can and (imho) should be free standing answers to given questions in and of ...
- 15.4k
13
votes
2
answers
424
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What is the scope of what docker questions are on topic here?
This question briefly touches on this subject: Are questions on Docker suitable for ServerFault?
But none of the answers really address the general question comprehensively about what types of ...
- 133
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3
answers
110
views
Remove the messages tag
I recently stumbled across the mess that is the messages tag.
It has no followers, which should probably be the main reason for burning a bad tag, as nobody is currently using it to track incoming ...
- 5,517
13
votes
1
answer
351
views
Burninate [repair]?
repair seems like a meta tag to me (repair what? the RAIDs? the LAMPs? TomTom's phone?). Should it be killed, and if so, how?
- 29.8k
13
votes
1
answer
668
views
Is ServerFault becoming more popular?
I'm recently seeing more questions from ServerFault SE people with lower reputation numbers meaning they are new users.
Does this mean that the ServerFault SE is finally catching on out there in ...
- 11.6k
13
votes
2
answers
201
views
Do mods now have to write nice emails to spammers?
I just noticed I can no longer quickly suspend spammers, I have to write an email to them (most have invalid emails anyway).
I know this is to appease the few users per year who, when their first 5 ...
- 99.6k
13
votes
5
answers
234
views
Colasoft "Spammers"
I have noticed a couple of people on SF that are "spamming" for a company called colasoft. If this was traditional one-liner spam I would be flagging it and moving on with my life.
However there is ...
- 36.9k
13
votes
2
answers
258
views
Happy sysadmin day 2013
Happy sysadmin day to all.
Friday, July 26, 2013, is the 14th annual System Administrator
Appreciation Day. On this special international day, give your System
Administrator something that ...
- 109
13
votes
6
answers
410
views
FAQ Rewrite edit round 1
Since the FAQ as-written was not accepted, we get to have an edit round.
The below is a grammar/spelling/punctuation checked version of the FAQ.
The edit process:
Proposed edits will be submitted ...
sysadmin1138Mod
- 130k
13
votes
1
answer
80
views
Notification of edit by the author on a post you downvote
Reading the ServerFault meta (very related to point 1 in that post) a common thread seems to be the decline of the "kindness" factor.
One of the more obvious indicator that bad questions are not ...
- 5,517
13
votes
1
answer
186
views
Are commercial placeholder domain names not blocked here?
I’ve just suggested an edit to a question which used xyz.com as a placeholder domain name. Lots of people are unfamiliar with RFC 2606, and therefore use domain names other than example{.com|.org|.net}...
- 1,157
13
votes
1
answer
116
views
How to deal with off-topic questions that cannot be closed?
A came across a question which looks off-topic to me. I voted to migrate the question, but got an error message saying:
This question has an open bounty and cannot be closed
How should we deal ...
- 29.7k
13
votes
1
answer
540
views
Why are the job ads on serverfault all for developers?
ServerFault is frequented by system administrators.
careers.serverfault.com exists, and has job adverts for system administrators and the like.
Yet, all the job ads on the right hand side of ...
- 271
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votes
1
answer
71
views
Answered questions styling
Could answered questions be restyled with a solid colour fill like the other sites please? It is hard to tell from a glance which questions have a marked answered. thanks.
- 860
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votes
2
answers
228
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Cleanup duplicate tags: different by hyphenation and pluralization
Inspired by bad-tag-cleanup project by our awesome mod, here I suggest the idea to cleanup duplicate tags:
Different by one or hyphen, for example port-forwarding vs portforwarding and mod-security ...
- 17.9k
13
votes
4
answers
399
views
FAQ Rewrite - Round 3
The Words and links below have been incorporated into the FAQ
The proposed FAQ has been officially rejected by the power that be. They had an interesting choice of words for the previous edit. The ...
- 77.2k
13
votes
2
answers
179
views
Ban Well-Known URL Shortner Links
Title says it all. Can we ban the well-known URL shortners from links in the site. I'd prefer in general text too, but that might to too far in some cases.
Say these 14 (as stolen from a blog):
bit....
- 77.2k
13
votes
1
answer
250
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Stack Overflow Worldwide Meetups 2012
Can members from other technology related stackexchange sites attend Stack Overflow Worldwide Meetups 2012 ?
- 103
13
votes
1
answer
78
views
Extra word in help document
I had cause to post text from https://serverfault.com/help/closed-questions in a comment today, and there's a section that reads
too broad - if your question could be answered by an entire book, ...
- 77.9k
12
votes
5
answers
472
views
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 ...
- 70.6k
12
votes
5
answers
605
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, ...
- 112k
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votes
5
answers
352
views
Does copy editing Unicode punctuation into posts contribute value?
This isn't specific to SF, but it came up recently and it's worth a brief touch point. Recently in the review queue, I stumbled upon the following edit:
Before:
How do you troubleshoot Apache ...
- 31.5k
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votes
6
answers
1k
views
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 (...
- 68k
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votes
7
answers
625
views
Chat - a plea for moderation
I’ve been a member of the SF chat room for quite some time. Whilst it was never the most learned place to be, at one time it was at least safe for work. Right now it’s an open to google sewer where ...
- 113k
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votes
4
answers
217
views
Moderation inconsistencies
I flagged this deleted answer (unilaterally deleted by a moderator) for reopening, and gave the explanation "This answer is no worse than any others that have been left intact. It should be reinstated ...
wombleMod
- 94.5k
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votes
7
answers
300
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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 ...
- 5,655
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4
answers
779
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Proposed change to Server Fault guidelines, round 2
I'd like to propose some changes to the guidelines in our help center on what questions are on topic.
The goals of this change are:
Alter the language to focus on the question being asked as opposed ...
- 112k
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votes
2
answers
641
views
Which other site should “unprofessional” people fly away?
I wrote a question two weeks ago, closed for not being professional enough. I tried to understand why it was closed, and i tried to make understand people that perhaps they were wrong closing it, and ...
- 101
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votes
8
answers
395
views
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 ...
- 11.6k
12
votes
6
answers
209
views
Solving Problems using ServerFault
Using StackOverflow pretty much guratanteed I would eventually solve each problem I posted. I believe this is largely to do with that fact that when solving problems in code, you can post the broken ...
rwired
12
votes
2
answers
297
views
How to ask my question but obfuscate my real data
I asked one question about my DNS records and was forced to substitute my real domain name and IP with fake data like 111.111.111.111 & bar.com.
One user didn't welcome that and made me -1, so I ...
- 437
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votes
5
answers
468
views
In what circumstances should VirtualBox questions be on topic?
Oracle VM VirtualBox is a virtualization solution which is (now) supposedly targeted at "enterprise as well as home users" according to its web site.
In the past, we've been mostly hostile to ...
- 234k
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3
answers
454
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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 ...
- 1,530
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votes
6
answers
221
views
ServerFault - rules for questions without accepted answers?
I looked in the FAQs section and searched, but maybe I'm missing it.
I've noticed a lot of questions that have great answers that have been voted up 5-20 times for the answer, but the original ...
TheCleaner
12
votes
6
answers
206
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Community Posts for Blog.SF?
A lot of other sites are using blog.site.stackexchange.com to create a blog on their topic with contributions from the community.
The Server Fault blog has mostly been posts from George and I about ...
- 81.5k
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votes
2
answers
325
views
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).
...
- 209
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answers
212
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12
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3
answers
435
views
"Unclear what you're asking" - Is it?
Today, I have seen (and answered) this question on zfs. For me, the question made perfect sense and has been well-researched and well-written. Yet, it managed to earn two close votes where the close ...
- 40.2k
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votes
2
answers
328
views
How can I get people to fully read my question?
I'm having trouble with getting people who review my questions to read the entire question before answering!
I've noticed that my most difficult questions on ServerFault usually end up with answers ...
- 3,903
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votes
2
answers
327
views
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....
- 32.2k
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votes
2
answers
246
views
Is it just me or is the quality of questions on SF declining?
Within the past few months, I have noticed a definite decline in the quality and type of questions. It seems that SF is handling a lot of programming, or beginning/home users that really should be ...
- 11.6k
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1
answer
147
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IT Certification tags used in questions
I saw this over on Meta.SO: Should certification questions be closed? where the answer stated:
Questions that ask for clarification on or an answer to a specific
question from a certification ...
- 32.2k
12
votes
2
answers
151
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Moderators, please educate us
After last night's town hall meeting this was said in chat
But there were some opinions from candidates that go against the grain of what the current mods enforce
which is kind of expected as we ...
- 113k
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votes
3
answers
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Appropriateness of a "Best April Fools Day IT pranks" question
April Fools' day is coming up soon and it's been a few years since I've pulled any pranks off at my company. I'd like to get some ideas from the general populous, but I have a feeling it would get ...
- 4,686