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completely redid the post.
Jeter-work
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Need to revisit rules regarding hosted servers

(extensively edited)

This post (http://serverfault.com/questions/807412/backups-running-out-of-disk-space-possible-to-mount-a-network-drive) was flagged as off-topic due to

Questions involving web hosting control panels are off-topic at Server Fault because they customize their systems such that normal administration tools and methods no longer apply

This is dangerous territory.

Particularly because the question is not about a webhosting control panel, and one is not even mentioned.

  1. SF users should avoid anything that is exclusionary to new sysadmins. There's a lot of us who bootstrapped our way out of the service support area into the system administration area. One way of doing that is using web resources to learn about new topics. Got 10k rep here and upset because an end user is asking about their web based control panel administration tool, then explain to the poster that server fault is about system administration. Root level admin. Control panels are end user topics. And help them move the topic to superuser or whatever stack is appropriate.
  2. Sysadmins are supporting cloud services, from storage to Infrastructure to Software, more and more. If SF doesn't support sysadmins in these roles, SF will become irrelevant. We need to revisit the rules that imply that hosted servers are off-topic to explicitly limit that rule to situations where the poster does not have administrative access.
  3. We need to police the comments on 'close' flags to prevent the perception that SF is elitist and exclusionary. The Linux world suffers from this perception (well earned in many cases) and it inhibits growth and healthy discussion. If the SF user base is not careful, aggressive, elitist and exclusionary comments will drive users away. (Though a certain other site geared towards discussion seems to thrive in spite of rampant a-holitis amongst the users.)

You might ask, "It's not your post, you don't lose any reputation, why do you care?" Basically, I migrate quickly away from any forum that is not supportive of new members, or where the existing membership starts showing elitist tendencies. Comments like, "I can't believe you are wasting your time on this issue, anyone who's been around knows..." are toxic. Guess what? There are new system administrators starting their careers every single day. They need our experience. SF is an awesome format to share that experience. But it needs both experienced users and new users to survive.

Jeter-work
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