Also a lot of SMEs need to 'make do' with one thing or another to meet their limited budgets. We should be advising on where that is most appropriate not snootily turning our noses up and telling people to be more professional.

I am well aware what vmware is. Another example of pedantry rather than answering the real point. Aside from the fact that the specific questions I was thinking about were in fact about ESXi, workstation is marketed as a product for professionals to setup or manipulate virtual machines for their other professional platforms, maybe you were thinking of vmware player? None the less, the question itself, not the mere mention of the word home should determine whether it is on topic. How many 'vmware' experts are there frequenting SU do you think?

I have seen many questions about pro technologies eg. vmware that were closed as off topic simply because they mentioned a home/dev setup. The answers would have been far more useful here than on SU because they apply to the technology regardless of the environment that it is being used in

On hold effectively kills a question though so it only offers the chance for rewording, not to get some use out of the question as it stands.

How ironic that you deem my answer as offtopic rather than think about the actual point of it. In the form of questions now, happy?

Good content is what solves people's problems, not what keeps answerers interested. If you don't want to deal with the mundane then narrowing scope isn't a great way to deal with that, providing steps to help people help themselves or automatically providing or redirecting to common answers would be better.

Don't lose sight of the fact that 'people who are generating good content' actually consists of 2 groups with different priorities. As a questioner if my boring/slightly off topic question gets dismissed or hounded then I am likely to take my good questions away too.

The poor content is irrelevant when you are searching for a relevant answer to a problem. I don't see serverfault not working, I see a bunch of people with false expectations complaining.

If sales people came to stackoverflow asking for a step by step of how to write a program saying that 'hiring a developer is not an option' people would also laugh in their face. Everyone agrees that clear cut spoonfeeding is not welcome but there needs to be a balance so that doesn't stop help to people who are new to the field and simply trying to learn.

I think this post is a symptom of a community that has become too wrapped up in itself. People come here to solve problems, not for your entertainment. Every question isn't going to be interesting, a boring question still deserves an answer.

tbh the take it to chat feature is pretty useless. generally when it is an argument at least one person is still giving info useful to the answer and it is not as if they are going to agree their differences and come back to the question with a summary

Rep is not the point of stack exchange, no one has lost anything important by getting -16

The aim is not to score points, it is to have good or correct answers. If people delete a bad or incorrect answer then the feedback system is working as intended! The only problem here is in not being able to give back the acceptance, and because people are encouraged to keep high acceptance levels wrong answers are quite often accepted.

But it might be a correct answer. Pls stop providing contrived examples that are not a true comparison. It doesn't make your point.

Can you tell me for certain that the 2nd option of the 3rd menu in IIS is the same in every region around the world? No. That doesn't stop people asking and answering IIS questions. Your example is flawed by the fact that any answer is qualified.