TL;DR - Yes, we are, but those tooltips also SUCK.
Upvotes are pretty easy - The tooltip of suggested upvote criteria is
This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear
To me the important part of this tooltip is it is useful and clear, which is what I base my voting on -- "Is it conceivable that another professional would have a similar question, and this this question and its answers would help that person?"
If I can answer yes to that the question is probably worthy of an upvote (or at least not worthy of a downvote).
I think the Apache sites-available question is certainly useful to other admins - especially Non-Debian folks (though I do think the research there was lacking - Google the title and you get an answer - See below).
Downvotes are harder - The tooltip of suggested downvote criteria is
This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful
This seems like crap guidance to me.
Certainly a question that could be answered by literally pasting the title into Google and clicking the first link should be downvoted and the asker instructed to, well, paste their title into Google and click the first link.
I'm OK with downvoting someone who is THIS lazy but the question should also be closed.
It's crap, and it will attract more crap.
Questions that are "unclear" should really not be downvoted - they should be closed.
We have a close reason especially for these ("Unclear what you're asking"), and more than one downvote on these questions is superfluous. One is enough to ensure the question reaper will do its job.
Questions that are "not useful"? Well EVERY question is useful to the person asking it. If we apply my "useful to another professional" criteria above this is good guidance, but it's important to remember there are varying levels of experience across the broad swath of "professionals".
- A junior admin is still a professional even if they don't know how to customize Windows start screens.
(As a unix admin I've certainly no bloody clue! I can do it on Windows 95/98...) - MDMarra is certainly a professional even though he's never had to work with Private Enterprise Numbers before.
(Not too many years ago in my career I didn't know. OIDs were just "1.3.6.1.4.1.stuff" to me.) - The guy who volunteered to help wire up internet connectivity for his apartment is doing so in a professional capacity.
(He's also clinically insane for wanting to basically run his own mini-ISP, but that's between him and the men in the white coats.)
We should not be voting based on whether we like the premise of the question.
That said, we do.
The Hyper-V clustering question is getting smacked because of the XY problem: The person asking the question has latched on to a solution and is abjectly refusing to listen to the Right Solution (If anyone is now saying, “wait, what about a SAN or a NAS for the file servers?”, well too bad.)
I'm not sure how I feel about this as a moderator (Mod Hat On it's really NOT what downvotes are for Mod Hat Off), but as a professional if someone is going to take up our time and expect us to give them free advice they should state their problem and listen to our solutions without imposing insane restrictions.
