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@MDMarra: It's sometimes a problem. I have noticed sometimes particular users developing a 'fan' following of people who upvote them even when there are clearly better answers showing that don't receive upvotes. But this isn't a common occurrence. With regards to the FAQ, well, I suppose that makes sense. I know more about systems administration than most programmers, but I would by no means call myself a professional sysadmin. I can play one in a pinch, and the systems I administrate will not end up a total mess, but it's not where I belong. And in that sense I guess I agree.
@JohnGardeniers: Additionally, your supposition that some people simply aren't qualified to participate on SF is both contrary to the propaganda about the stack exchange sites generally but completely confirms my suspicions and thoughts about the casual and 'well-meaning' elitism present here.
No, downvotes are significantly more valuable than upvotes. They actually cost people rep to make. You learn the most from people who disagree with you, not from people who agree with you.
@MDMarra: I've been wondering about that. My experience with VirtualBox with loads requiring heavy disk IO has been very poor in general. I should try VMWare I suppose. Anyway, thanks for the answer to both of my questions. I do read FAQs and am quite familiar with this site. It just bothers me immensely to have all kinds of nebulous negativity I don't understand surrounding a question that seems like a perfectly valid and on-topic question. The explanation of what's wrong with it makes perfect sense though.
@MDMarra: Ahh. Well, that means this is a completely useless place to ask my question as I will likely never know the answers to those questions. It's actually been a huge pain to measure performance for the VirtualBox builds. They take approximately 7 times longer than native builds and there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason for them to. Though that's on different hardware, and we don't have the resources to compare the builds on the same hardware. But yes, I can see how that would be really open-ended.
