> This is part of a set of questions on how Server Fault defines "professional" system and network administration.  For additional information, see:  
>
> * http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/4111/what-is-a-professional-capacity

There is this thing about ServerFault I've just accepted and did not question - its focus on the sysadmin audience and not a topical area. Given the recent discussions about the site's dynamics and contour, I started to wonder why this is so. As the site did not go through the proposal/incubator process of Area51, I had trouble finding much on this topic.

What is so specific about the system and network administration topic that this Q&A site would not work outside of a "professional" scope compared to, say, coding. Or photography. Or Unix. Or IT Security. All sites' communities (including Stack Overflow's) seem to cope well with a wide variety of skill levels and topics, so why is Server Fault calling for an exception here?

Are there historical posts (Blogs or Meta) documenting the reasoning or a discussion about why SF has been targeted at "professional" sysadmins? Who made this decision? With what rationale?

What I could find so far indicates that the community originally has been imagined significantly broader than what it is being defined as currently. For example [this announcement of the public beta][1] which incidentally contains this section:

> Richard and Greg talk to Jeff Atwood of Stack Overflow fame about being a developer who also maintains infrastructure.

And [this announcement from Jeff Atwood's blog][2] which explicitly invites exactly those "half-professionals" to the site who are being declared non-grata lately:

> So if you're a bona-fide BOFH, or just a wanna-be BOFH luser like me, join us on Server Fault. Who knows, maybe we lusers can learn something from each other.

Please note that I am not asking the questions to imply that some of the regulars of this community are redlining too much (although there certainly are days where I am under this impression), but because I *really* would like to hear the arguments to get a better understanding of what is going on.

  [1]: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/server-fault-public-beta-nears/
  [2]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/05/server-fault-calling-all-lusers.html