"As a sysadmin I don't really care about the design decisions made by the developers of a particular file system I just work with them." - fair enough. I was more curious than anything - this was more like a classification question.

I guess I was just suprised when I got a closure/-1 as I have never had this for any of my other Q/As on any of the Stack Exchange sites before. I would compare it to the feeling to getting a parking ticket.

Alright. I didn't think it was that confusing, but considering how many people did find it confusing I guess it was. As such, I don't actually agree with the comment you just made - at least 1 person was able to understand what I was asking give me a really good answer. But I'm not going to whinge any more as I at least agree with you in principle - I can see cases where I might have taken the same action (closure).

Good feedback BUT no - this is not really a good representation of my question. That page answers part of my question, and this is why I am getting a bit frustrated (i.e. I got a -1 response when I don't think people have actually grasped what I'm asking here). My over-generalised statement is "Linux Paths" = NFS-like, "Windows Paths" = Y; Please define Y. As you can see this is a very specific questions about the underlying technology of an operating system. The answer provided gives good insight - serverfault.com/a/337438/24816 As you can see, this is a non-trivial question.

Cheers. I'm trying not to get upset because I know people are just trying to do the right thing by the community. I did actually think this is a good question though, and I don't want to be afraid of asking questions like this in the future.

To further strengthen my case, I have edited my question - serverfault.com/questions/337327/…