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@Wesley there are hardly any intermediate questions here because all intermediate questions are answered elsewhere already (even in the respective product's documentation) and the "intermediate" admin knows where to look. The remaining questions are either beginners' (who don't know where to look due to lack of experience) or ones not answered easily (and thus possibly never even posted due to the unlikelihood of getting an answer).
I am interpreting this passage as a requirement for moderator action and content to be exemplary to others: no arbitrary decisions, no swearing, this kind of stuff. It does not sound like a call to arms to me.
Well, here is a query with an average view count for Server Fault questions. At the moment, we average at 1,211 views (or $5.45). I can tell from personal experience that most answers indeed do need research to cite sources, documentation, include pictures or even look up markdown syntax. While I am aware that profit is being made off the content generated here, any sysadmin knows that infrastructure is not paying for itself. For me personally, it looks sufficiently balanced not to start feeling ripped off.
This is unlikely to work. While a number of people might be incentivized by the prospect of earning $1,48 for an answer which took them half an hour to research and write, they probably are the wrong kind of people to keep this site a valuable resource.
This reads very much like you are no longer participating not only because you lack the time to do so but also because the scope of your work has changed considerably and has outgrown the scope of Server Fault. As you noted yourself, being a technical lead in an international consultancy is an entirely different job than being a university sysadmin. I believe it is not so much about Server Fault changing but more about its senior users changing and expecting the site to follow - which is not happening.
"Under certain constrained circumstances, disabling User Account Control (UAC) on Windows Server can be an acceptable and recommended practice." (MS KB 2626083)- you see that an undifferentiated one-size-fits-all approach does have some problems?
Plus, a number of links (everything which is linked in the inbox or the recent reputation changes dropdown) are still hard-coded to http://. And Imgur/Cloudflare even has a https:// service, although this is using TLS 1.0 and even RC4. There still is some work to do.
Personally, I would have major trouble determining the amount of research effort put into a question if it is not within my area of expertise. It is way easier to just determine if it is "useful and clear" - I suppose folks just stick with that.
Shog, how does the low PotNewUsersQuestionsBad number in your graph above (<50/week) fit into the 2630 bad questions from 0-rep users within 90 days? This is 4 times the volume we see in the graph.
@MDMarra I really think it should not be closed, yes. I never considered decisions about what's valuable for the community to be my job here, I am just answering questions I feel qualified to answer and asking questions I believe might get answered. Also, I do think that newcomers should be cut some slack - which appears to be working rather poorly lately.
@dcaswell I've posted a screenshot. @others the question is not about "how to expand the DHCP scope". It is about the possible implications of doing so. Folks really should develop the habit of actually reading and understanding a question prior to hitting the close link underneath.
@voretaq7 this is what I would consider a problem inherent to the current review system. While it certainly needs to be fixed, the workaround would not be to tell people off for casting the first vote.
@Ward I fail to see how this might present a problem which would be going beyond the inherent shortcomings of the review system and question closures. A single close vote will not have immediate negative impact on a question. Moreover, questions with accepted answers tend to only rarely attract additional answers, so there can't be much harm in getting them closed. The only potential source of trouble seems to be the chance of a question ban for the asker, but as the algorithm for this process is opaque, I would not start discussing the consequences before we really see such a case.
