As a user of Stack Exchange sites for a while now, I have often been frustrated by the lack or predictability in whether a question will be up-voted, down-voted or closed. In general, I do not ask questions that I believe to be off-topic. I always try to search for answers first and attempt to solve the problem on my own. But I am not an expert in everything and am not ashamed to admit I often seek the advice of others in areas where I am not knowledgeable. This past week I've asked two questions on Server Fault. Both were good questions that I could not find a good answer too, and both were, as far as I can tell, a good fit for this site. One question got 6 up votes, the other got 3 down votes and closed. If the later question was inappropriate, that's fine. But the problem is: 1. Since not a single person who down-voted or voted to close bothered to explain why, and 2. since, as far as I can tell, there isn't anything wrong with the question (or else I wouldn't have posted it in the first place), **How am I supposed to know what not to do in the future?** With great power comes great responsibility, and *those with the power to close questions have the responsibility to explain why*, especially when the OP has made a reasonable effort to conform to the site standards. [The specific question][1] asks if using an online backup service such as Jungle Disk for our company servers creates any security liabilities for us and what can be done to avoid them. I would like someone to please explain how a question related to the security of backing up a server is considered "off topic" for a site about server administration. In general, there needs to be a degree of predictability in what is and isn't acceptable here. Every time I ask a question, I honestly have no idea whether it will be up-voted, down-voted, closed, or ignored. The close message is: > Questions on Server Fault are expected to generally relate to servers, > networking, or desktop infrastructure, within the scope defined in the > faq. I've read the FAQ and I believe this question falls within the defined scope. If it does not, please tell me why, and perhaps the FAQ should be updated accordingly. [1]: https://serverfault.com/questions/368236/does-installing-jungle-disk-or-similar-cloud-based-backup-services-create-a-vuln