@drookie In a way, yes. It is indeed a goal to help the person asking the question, but more than that, SE's goal is to foster very high-quality questions and high-quality answers that can serve as a reference for future people that run into similar issues and arrive here from various search engines. The downvote mechanism helps clean up poor-quality questions so that they don't water down the high-quality questions with crap.

@antonio - There is no such requirement to comment when downvoting.

I could see some benefit of a canonical QA on this were we lay out well-reasoned, well-explained reasons why control panels are to be avoided at all costs.

Having support reps answer questions is not the problem. The problem is when you direct your users here for tech support.

On the last paragraph of your "Answers" section. I sure hope this isn't truly holding you back from voting. As you say, they're stupid points. If you see one of the regulars give a clunker of an answer, slap a dv on that sucker and tell them why. Chris S did just that to an incorrect answer I made earlier today, and I'm very glad he did it. Don't worry about alienating me or anyone else. Do what's right for the site, and all will be elevated because of it.

@ChrisS God help us if it is.

@mbrownnyc - Well you're not doing yourself any favors here.

@mbrownnyc I don't think "condescending personal attack" means what you think it means. He spoke out against what you were doing, which was indeed stupid, not about who you are personally.

"My server is herping, and I need it to derp" <--- I LOLed. :)

I give you a hearty Bravo for coming here to ask a clarifying question about the scope of Serverfault. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You can't imagine how many people we have that come here, asking questions about anything and everything, feeling entitled to an answer regardless if the topic is completely out-of-scope for the site. Thank you again.

@Lumberjack Iain doesn't have vitriol for the outsider. As he articulates, he has vitriol for the outsider that can't be bothered to read the help page and ensure that what he's asking is on-topic.

Mark - in the vast majority of cases, drive-by-downvotes are left without comment because they conform to the downvote guidelines laid out in the down-arrow tooltip.