Lovely that you feel that way and all, but its both irrelevant and contrary to the Stack Exchange philosophy. If you want a place where questions are basically never closed, and no one cares about quality or signal-to-noise ratio, check out Yahoo! Answers. Not only can you find answers to questions about computer stuff, but you can even learn why your butt hurts after sex!

In addition to Iain's comment, the other problem with your type of question is that it's just too big to fit well in the Q&A format SE has, IMO. Regarding the rest, whether we agree with it or not, the Stack Exchange policy has been no "shopping questions" for quite some time, so... well, is what it is. Not something we have any real control over.

Well, we have a chat room... which is pretty similar to IRC, though I do prefer IRC. And while I agree that forums do build community a better, they're worse for getting actual help solving whatever problem it is you're having. Low signal-to-noise ratio and all that, so... as I said, I don't see a better way of doing it, and haven't found anything better, leading me to believe this might be as good as it gets.

I concur that the Q&A format is restrictive and may even be detrimental to professional sysadmin questions (troubleshooting via Q&A sucks), but the problem is I don't think there's anything better. The forum format certainly doesn't do any better, and you're just not going to get a community built around free, live support. The problem, of course, is that I don't know of anything better, or even how it could be done better... so ServerFault's as good as it gets, as least as far as I've been able to find.

@ETL I don't think you should even bother with that. Odds of the the comment making a damn bit of difference are about 0, and often enough, the OP gets all offended and starts being an ass. Comment arguing ensues, and it's probably just better to close the question, delete it, and hope the OP who couldn't be bothered to read the FAQ before asking a question just goes away and bothers someone else.

Yup. Answering the question with your Google-Fu does not prevent a more experienced person from coming by and adding a better answer later.

@ETL then it would be a matter of putting a useful edit on the question (or answer) to help it be better grabbed by anyone using the search. Off the top of my head, that would probably involve a brief, generic "problem" or explanation/statement that mod_rewrite is used to redirect websites/urls programmatically. Could be you who adds this content/keywords/tags to the existing canonical...

Only thing I'd ask would be what's wrong with the one we have now? (Yes, that blog post). It's an important question to ask if we want to construct something "better." Given that the "not about… Product, service, or learning material recommendations" bit has been added to the FAQ, and is linked (making it stand out), I'm not sure that we'd be making a significant improvement by writing a custom version of "Q&A is hard, let's go shopping!"

The vast, vast, vast majority of people who ask the really bad questions have (somehow) managed to avoid reading the SF FAQ, looking around the site even a little, or even consulting Google. And when ServerFault doesn't provide them "teh codez for fixing [foo]" they vanish, never to be seen on ServerFault again. So while we can provide some more helpful text, I am in complete agreement with Iain that it's not something worth putting much effort into. Anyone who actually cares about asking better questions has no problems finding the resources we already have for that purpose.

@gWaldo And again, the tone (or attitude) and the expertise are part of the same package. You can curse the darkness or wish the frog had wings, but that's not going to bring the light, or create a flying frog. That is what it is, and I am who I am. It's just not gonna change, no matter how much you might like it to, so the only question left is whether (on the balance) I should be part of this community or not. In my mind, the answer to that question (and that the question even needs to be asked) is instructive WRT the broader problem of why SF isn't reaching the broader sysadmin community.

@gWaldo ...and "if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass when he hops." But the frog doesn't have wings, so he bumps his ass when he hops. And I'm not tactful enough for some people's taste, so here we are, I guess. For the record, I have toned it down. A lot. But this.. the "language" that's being objected to in this thread... simply ridiculous. You're not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too on this one - either I'm around, answering questions, and occasionally pointing out that someone's boss is being a dumbass (and using mildly coarse language), or I'm not around.

@KatherineVillyard If you say so. But at the same time as we're talking about being as inclusive as possible, it's probably worth bearing in mind that having Mary Whitehouse lurking in every thread waiting to pounce on any trivial language which may be inappropriate for small children is also exclusive and off-putting. Really, who likes "grammar Nazis" or "courtesy police?" And which group of people do we think is larger? Adults who expect all language to be appropriate for a classroom of preschoolers, or adults who are put-off by having that standard imposed on them?

@KatherineVillyard That would be precisely why I don't make a habit of turning the filter off around people whom I don't know well. I'm not dropping f-bombs, sexual references, or vulgar language. Your boss doesn't know his ass from an SMTP relay. [...] find a boss who's less stupid, is perfectly acceptable language for adult discourse, doubly so for an audience of techies who are generally more comfortable with sharp language than most. I'm not looking to make anyone uncomfortable, but at the same time, if that quoted text makes someone uncomfortable, that's their issue, not mine.

@Iain I do implement some personal moderation, thank you very much. Furthermore, the only "context" in which Your boss doesn't know his ass from an SMTP relay could reasonably be considered "rude" is when said in the presence of the dumb boss being spoken of, or perhaps when said in the company of small children or nuns. To my knowledge, none of those typically browse ServerFault, so I don't see the problem here. Evidently, I'm not tactful or sensitive or family-friendly (or w/e) enough for your taste, and you're overly sensitive for mine. This really requires a meta thread? :/

...and now it's been sanitized, and is less memorable. Oh well.