The Comms Room

r.tanner.f

12:00 AM

@HopelessN00b Or just save it in My Documents so it goes on the SAN, like my "normal" users do.

Miles Erickson

@HopelessN00b Or a 25-cent DVD+R, if she wants to live dangerously.

@r.tanner.f Or that.

r.tanner.f

Took me three hours to teach this same person to use Windows 7. I need a drink...

HopelessN00b

@MilesErickson Oh, yeah, that would be a good reason. In that case, I've got a 2 GB USB flash drive you could throw at her head.

r.tanner.f

How long does one work the helldesk before sins from a past life are forgiven? Clearly I was a mass baby murderer or something.

Joel E Salas

@r.tanner.f You must repay your penance with the strength of your beard.

HopelessN00b

12:04 AM

@r.tanner.f Don't get too excited. I'm still clearly paying for sins in a past life in my SA position. New job title doesn't wipe it all away.

Anyway, someone go approve my tag-wiki edit so I don't have to have an unround number of rep all weekend.

MDMarra

@ewwhite mess? You mean "time to study your perfection?"

Joel E Salas

@HopelessN00b Do you have to open and close a file an even number of times before you log out

HopelessN00b

@JoelESalas Nah, I just don't log out of shit. Or close files.

Doesn't matter anyway, had to downvote a spucking fammer. :(

Ryan Ries

12:23 AM

My non-technical GF overheard me talking tech jargon over the phone to a co-worker today. Now she's walking around saying "You put the queer back in SQL query." FML.

3

HopelessN00b

@RyanRies Ask her if she's been putting on weight lately and she'll forget all about your queer-back SQLs.

Scott Pack

What is she's right?

ewwhite

12:51 AM

@MDMarra I need some changes to be made to the setup

probably TS GPO.

I finally got the Valley person to look today

HopelessN00b

Oh good, Martin's back.

-2

Q: What components are needed to setup in-house cloud services?

I am looking to setup an in-house cloud service for both experimentation and actual use. I am looking at XCP and CloudStack. We only want Ubuntu 12.04 LTS instances, no need for Windows at all. The system will probably be housed in four nicely-loaded physical machines. We might install ISPConf...

Ward

I swear I didn't notice who it was when I downvoted and voted to close...

MDMarra

1:08 AM

@ewwhite Sure. Like what kind of stuff?

@RyanRies Whenever Katie asks how work was and I start telling her, she just yells "BLADES, ACTIVE DIRECTORIES" and walks away

ewwhite

@MDMarra I need more clarification on migration

so let's say I take the main user, MHUGHES... what happens if I move him into the new OU?

he gets a new profile, right? Or is something moved?

MDMarra

next time he logs in, he'll be redirected to the new file server with empty folders

ewwhite

essentially a new profile...

MDMarra

yep

ewwhite

so do I need to be the one to move his stuff?

I need some RDS defaults to be in place.

and maybe I'll go through group policy to add them...

basically MS best practices...

MDMarra

1:11 AM

I thought the guy on site there was going to do it, but yeah you opted for manual moving of files

ewwhite

e.g. no MSN.com as a homepage

right, I'm wondering if this is a chance to reset all passwords, etc.

MDMarra

might as well, really

Ryan Ries

RD Gateway is my favorite

ewwhite

Although, I just got this in the mail a few moments ago.

(packed in F-ing styrofoam.)

MDMarra

like, styrofoam peanuts?

ewwhite

1:14 AM

worse... flaky styrofoam sheets.

MDMarra

oof

ewwhite

I just vacuumed my condo's hallways, etc.

And no RAILKIT!

but it was a server grab bag...

MDMarra

rails are for pussies

Ryan Ries

I wish we had fewer rail designs

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Serious question. If I want to stand up a customer-facing service, do I want a colo facility? Assume I won't have many customers at first (0-5)

Ryan Ries

1:15 AM

God forbid 2 different models of servers use the same goddamn rails

ewwhite

all those disks... fibre channel card. 48GB RAM. 14 15k disks

@JoelESalas a web service?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Yes

MDMarra

@RyanRies As much as I dislike dell at the moment, their 11g and 12g rails are awesome

ewwhite

@JoelESalas I think you have a few options. VPS, managed colo, colo, cloud...

Ryan Ries

@MDMarra There are some very nice rail kits out there, I just wish the industry would standardize, even a little bit

ewwhite

1:17 AM

depends.

HP's are pretty standard across lines

and they tend to span generations

@JoelESalas the real way to answer is...

how much gear do you need for the app?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite It's just a baby-sized task that I want to turn into an ongoing weekend project. If it ends up going nowhere, I don't want to lose a few grand on colo hosting. Unless there's a really cheap option I'm not aware of.

ewwhite

yes, there are many options...

let me give you an idea...

MDMarra

@ewwhite So, besides the IE home page, what else were you planning on configuring on that box?

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra Lol'd

ewwhite

I have a list of things... Let me play with a clean profile and see what works.

for @joel what are your resource requirements?

MDMarra

1:25 AM

@JoelESalas Heh. It was a serious question. I already disabled offline files. hid a bunch of control panel and start menu stuff, etc.

@ewwhite keep in mind that domain administrators are blocked from processing that policy so that they aren't locked down on that box

ewwhite

I created a test user

MDMarra

ok good

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite about 40-50GB RAM, decent IOPS

ewwhite

how much storage?

and what are "decent IOPS"?

@JoelESalas Do you know your bandwidth needs?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I can't be sure, it depends on usage patterns that I haven't identified yet. It's mainly going to be REST traffic which can't be more than a few KB per request.

ewwhite

1:30 AM

do you need a specific region?

what's your budget?

Just one server?

hmm

Miles Erickson

@JoelESalas Sounds an awful lot like some of our favorite scale questions. You need more data.

Joel E Salas

@MilesErickson I have some of the data. My concern is high capex and I don't make any money.

Miles Erickson

@JoelESalas Right, but if you don't know whether you need 100 IOPS or 10,000 IOPS...

ewwhite

Based on your answers to those questions, I'd be able to make a recommendation.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I would like to spend not-a-fortune but if I line up a customer I'll just use their money to buy the stuff.

Miles Erickson

1:35 AM

@JoelESalas See, what happens with scale questions on the main site is that askers provide vague inputs and expect specific outputs. The same thing is happening here.

ewwhite

RAM, Disk size, # of servers, bandwidth and your budget.

So a single-tier application will have different needs than something with a web front end and a backend database.

Or a pr0n server...

Joel E Salas

@MilesErickson I have a good idea of what I need, I'm trying to decide what hosting paradigm is best suited to this type of workload and my general squeamishness

MDMarra

@JoelESalas you need this

:)

ewwhite

@JoelESalas yeah, a couple of more answers and we'll be able to help

For instance, VPS would such for high RAM and IOPS.

Cloud would suck for cost.

Colo would suck if you needed expandability or didn't want to pay for hardware.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite It could all live on one top-spec ESXi host, frankly. I may just end up biting the bullet and buying a box.

ewwhite

1:38 AM

I have some good colo contacts...

you obviously don't want a rack...

I just signed a new contract for my colo in Chicago today.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Can I pay you to make my problems go away

ewwhite

$A lot/month

@JoelESalas I'm trying to size it to see if I could host you.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite The best case would be using someone else's colo'd ESX box, as long as I could connect to it using vcenter

AbrahamVanHelpsing

is there a reason that question post in chat got flagged? nevermind, not in queue any more

Joel E Salas

But doing that implies a good bit of trust, and some isolation from the other hosts/clients

ewwhite

1:41 AM

@JoelESalas Which can be done.... but even then, I need your requirements.

MDMarra

@AbrahamVanHelpsing huh?

AbrahamVanHelpsing

i saw a chat flag and didn't know if there was a reason. didn't seem like a legit flag, so i popped over to see.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Although, single-server colo is cheap.

MDMarra

@AbrahamVanHelpsing No clue

pretty low key in here now

@JoelESalas is just trying to find a colo'd server with 50GB RAM without pying for it :)

AbrahamVanHelpsing

so he wants to static compile chromium on a free VPS ;)

Joel E Salas

1:44 AM

@ewwhite How cheap?

@MDMarra Is that an offer? :D

ewwhite

@JoelESalas so if you're talking a small server, we can help on price. But I have a colo hookup here in town that's reasonable as long sa you don't need much power

MDMarra

@JoelESalas I don't fuck with colo space, dude

ewwhite

data centers are all about power and cooling

that's what you're paying for

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I'll have to do some math. Honestly what I'd originally conceived was fairly janky, and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable offering a janky service.

MDMarra

@JoelESalas I'll host you on my macbook. Really good IOPS on this SSD

2

Joel E Salas

1:45 AM

@MDMarra Sorry, I only host on colo'd Macbook Airs.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Some ideas... You acquire a quality server... I could host you in my new DC.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Is it a remotely good idea to put all my eggs into one host/basket?

ewwhite

Gigabit link to the web, absolutely premier facility

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Your taxes must be nightmarish

ewwhite

@JoelESalas until you know what you need, yes.

@JoelESalas yes, they are.

Joel E Salas

1:47 AM

@ewwhite That's exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you

MDMarra

@JoelESalas I mean, My Macbook Air is colo'd in my bedroom right now

ewwhite

@JoelESalas if you're lucky and have an app where geo-DNS and all of that good stuff can help, then I can help you with load balancers.

but it depends on what your app is doing.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite What my app does depends on who's willing to pay for it

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra Actually, he ought to colo it on my MacBook Air. I'm not even taking it with me to Asia. We can colo it here in my house, with a dedicated fiber connection and everything.

Ryan Ries

►

MDMarra

1:50 AM

@MilesErickson Do you really?

And what's in asia?

I mean, besides asians.

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra Lots of really interesting food. Warm weather. And distance from an agreeable but very sad divorce.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas In your town, there's CalPOP.com - cheap colo, but cheap network, too.

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra Actually, I aspire to learn something about life, though I'm not committed to exactly what that will be.

ewwhite

in Chicago, I can get you 1U, 2U colo for < $300/mo.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite That's kind of perfect

MDMarra

1:53 AM

@MilesErickson Oh well sorry to hear about that last bit, but the rest sounds like a good time

AbrahamVanHelpsing

@RyanRies it pains me so to say that is hilarious...but it is.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas but it won't be private... e.g. other people have access to the rack. You'd probably want a firewall, etc, etc.

so that's where someone like me is handy... Good colo, good networking gear, IOPS, etc.

Joel E Salas

Oh BTW, new video

►

MDMarra

@JoelESalas Is that your youtube channel?

you look different than your gravatar

Ward

@AbrahamVanHelpsing If you look at the question that was linked, you'll see that the guy who asked the question was unhappy that it got closed.

Joel E Salas

1:55 AM

@MDMarra Yes it is. It's amazing what they can do in post these days. Like turn a mexican man into a white woman

too late for MJ ;_;

AbrahamVanHelpsing

@Ward i did. it seemed reasonable to me not to close it, but serverfault seems a little rough on the n00b so i can write it off

MDMarra

No kidding

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite What kind of storage are you rocking at your new facility?

MDMarra

@JoelESalas Is that a shot with sriracha in it?

martin's

@AbrahamVanHelpsing Are you guys talking about my question? This one: serverfault.com/questions/466364/…

MDMarra

2:00 AM

Or was it just on the table

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Still this monster...

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra HAHAHA Oh man that's a good idea.

ewwhite

AbrahamVanHelpsing

@martin's yes. the bannerbomb got flagged

ewwhite

(the top 8U)

MDMarra

2:00 AM

@JoelESalas So it was just on the counter then?

AbrahamVanHelpsing

i was over in AU and have enough rep over there to see chat flags

MDMarra

I was like WHAT THE HELL HAS SRIRACHA IN IT

Joel E Salas

@MDMarra Yeah that's just my house.

martin's

@AbrahamVanHelpsing Well, past history aside, I felt that this comment was deeply offensive and showed mod bias: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7639719#7639719

MDMarra

@martin's No mods voted, commented on, or talked about your question in chat

AbrahamVanHelpsing

2:04 AM

@martin's :/ probably best to let this one go

MDMarra

Mods have a diamond after their name

And they appear blue in the chat sidebar

AbrahamVanHelpsing

it didn't get banned or nuked...

Joel E Salas

@martin's There's the idea of an "answerable question." If you need help installing a package, easily done. If you need a vague abstract assessment of how best to proceed, you need a consultant.

See my earlier conversation with @ewwhite for what NOT to ask on the main site

Miles Erickson

@martin's ServerFault really tends to embrace specific questions about individual issues.

@martin's If you are looking for an open-ended discussion about a hypothetical scenario, there are other places on the Internet for that.

ewwhite

@JoelESalas Oh, this ain't over... You'll end up paying me in some way for this service.

Joel E Salas

2:07 AM

@martin's Understand that this is your personal question. We see maybe 3-4 questions like that a day, if not more

AbrahamVanHelpsing

@MilesErickson has a better idead of the ecosystem here than I do. I'm a zero on serverfault. I just saw a chat flag and tried to be helpful. /end

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Cookies! :D wait you mean the service of chitchatting about it?

ewwhite

@JoelESalas No, the actual solution... SInce it doesn't make sense to not buy hardware from me :)

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Your Jedi mind trick is compelling. I'll have to spec it out over the weekend on my desktop.

MDMarra

@martin's I'm not going to debate you because I'm 99% sure you're trolling. But just in case you aren't consider this:

You have a history of asking vague, undetailed answers that you seem to have put little to no effort into researching. When people tried to point that out before you got hostile and were banned. So for that, you catch people's eye now. We post all kinds of stuff in here that needs attention (good and bad).

As for this most recent question - It shows that you've really done no research at all. We expect that as a professional, users of this site have done their homework, t…

Also, don't start a flag war folks. We don't need a bunch of mods in here for no reason

Joel E Salas

2:11 AM

@MDMarra (slow clap)

AbrahamVanHelpsing

@martin's - if you're the guy i met at defcon it's fine. just simmer down a little. a question got closed. you're unhappy about it. move on. i deal with lots of things i'm unhappy about on a daily

jscott

@MDMarra That's funny, I just thought "Who the heck flags in SF.chat?!"

MDMarra

Yeah, @martin's flagged something in here for no reason and now someone keeps flagging something he said

Miles Erickson

@jscott I flagged myself once.

2

jscott

@MilesErickson Ha! Was it marked valid or invalid??

Miles Erickson

2:13 AM

@jscott Valid.

MDMarra

hahahahaha

AbrahamVanHelpsing

okay, i'm headed out. marked valid

Joel E Salas

@MilesErickson How'd you do it

MDMarra

@MilesErickson Evan Anderson came in to chat once after being idle on the site for 6 months or so and posted a permalink to something that I said that got oneboxed and had the F word in it. Someone flagged it and EA (highest rep on the site) got chatbanned in his first time in chat in a long time for quoting me

I couldn't stop laughing

jscott

Oh gosh, I hope someone contacted him to explain! I only recall seeing EA here a couple times.

MDMarra

2:16 AM

Apparently you can be un-banned

Because he was back and laughing about it a minute later

He didn't get the full time out

Miles Erickson

@JoelESalas I clicked the flag button, and...

Aarthi

Gentlemen.

martin's

@MDMarra No research? I spent all day researching this. Read all of the docs on the XEN site, watched three hours of video and installed XCP on a machine. The plain and simple truth is that there's a very elitist and arrogant bend here in SF. I tried. I really tried. As a professional with over thirty years in computing I have only seen this of shit in USENET groups that derailed. You guys are going to ruin SF for newcomers, if you haven't already. Troll? PM me for full id.

Aarthi

Please don't abuse the chat flag system for your own amusement. I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but do refrain. Don't be Peter, lest a real wolf eventually appear.

6

WesleyDavid

@Aarthi Hello, Bubbles.

Aarthi

2:21 AM

Kitty.

Except: no longer a kitty. Where is @voretaq7 did he feed kitty to the Lizard?

WesleyDavid

@Aarthi I'm still kitty. Well... kitty head on the cutting board. But still enough kitty there to be a kitty.

Aarthi

Oh dear.

MDMarra

Sorry man, I'm really not going to debate you here but the bottom line is that this is a *community* moderated site and you seem to be taking every opportunity possible to rub the people in this community the wrong way. Everyone gets downvoted and a question closed or an answer deleted now and then. The difference is that other people learn from it. You seem to be unilaterally trying to change the whole paradigm here that's evolved from this whole community.

Honestly, did you really think that trying to take on anyone that looked at you crookedly was the way to get a positive reaction on a…

Oh my god @Aarthi will you tell someone to fix markdown already

:)

Aarthi

@MDMarra I'll pass your love and adulation along to balpha, certainly!

MDMarra

haha

Joel E Salas

2:24 AM

@martin's You don't want an answer, you want an architecture-in-a-box. They sell those at Best Buy.

martin's

@MDMarra Nope. I really tried to use this community and, in the process, eventually, become a valued and useful member. I have much to contribute. However, SF has a personality unlike other SE sites. Very, very abrasive and harsh to any newcomers who might not align with what a small group thinks. That sets up an impasse that is nearly impossible to contend with, as I have learned the hard way. The latest question is one example of that. The other example is on migration from SO.

@JoelESalas Don't be ridiculous.

Joel E Salas

@martin's You posted a brainstorm, not a question.

Also I don't think I'm alone in assuming that someone with 30 years of experience can do a bit of Googling here and there and form their own opinion about different stacks, business requirements, cost and benefit relationships, etc.

MDMarra

Every Stack Exchange site is different. They all start with the same set of general guidelines and then evolve. We've evolved a set of rules over time that keep the site useful and on topic. You're not going to come in and change that overnight by being abrasive and uncompromising. They're the same set of rules that everyone else is expected to abide by here. They're not rules that we've created special just for you.

And REALLY do you think that asking for a list of products to further research is an acceptable question?

Really?

Aarthi

Could we take a different tack?

Looking at the question myself -- and note, I'm by no means a sysadmin -- but I do think that it would be tough to answer that question well.

The problem is that we have to balance questions that are things I'd blather about with colleagues at the pub vs things that have a true concrete answer.

The first will be too open -- I could write a full book about open-topic type questions. But the latter can reduce to too simple: what color is the sky.

Ward

So, @MilesErickson What're you doing with your plane while you're gone?

MDMarra

2:32 AM

Blog - Stack Exchange: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Robert Cartaino on September 29, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …

Miles Erickson

@Ward It'll get flown a bit by a couple of friends, but mostly it will be idle.

MDMarra

...you have a plane?

Shit, I'm doing something wrong

Aarthi

@MDMarra Yes, exactly. What the Stack Exchange platform does well is the middle section. We can't answer "Who is the president of Bolivia?" any better than we can answer "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra Specifically, not buying a plane.

MDMarra

Haha fair enough

Joel E Salas

2:34 AM

@Aarthi But we CAN answer "Why does the president of Bolivia do bad things to good people"

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra Why haven't you bought a plane? A perfectly good one can be had for $10-40K depending on what you want it to be capable of.

martin's

@MDMarra Why wouldn't this be a reasonable question. A problem with Googling everything is that searches don't return quality. After spending all day on this (despite what some are assuming here) I came to SF to see if I could get qualified feedback on some of the potential choices. It's almost like the idea of choosing a PHP framework. You can spend all day researching it online, install all of them and play with them. At one point it is VERY useful to hear from users to gain perspective.

Joel E Salas

@martin's And that "user" whose advice you value is a paid consultant.

MDMarra

@martin's Because it's open-ended and subjective. What you're asking for is a discussion of available options. That's not the kind of thing that happens here

Miles Erickson

@martin's See, now, here's where your accusation that we're dogmatic starts to bear fruit: PHP framework? Why are you using PHP? Why is anyone still using PHP?

Ward

2:35 AM

But then you've got a plane, gotta spend a bunch to learn to fly it and not kill yourself.

Aarthi

What I think we're seeing, then, is that tension: people (especially experienced pros not unlike yourself, @martin's) want to talk about those "Why do bad things happen to good people?" type of questions. And there's certainly value in those conversation. The problem is: our network doesn't generally handle those types of questions here.

That's not what our software was built for.

It's not even about list/shopping/recommendation problems: we can handle those questions to a degree.

MDMarra

If you have a question about how to implement specific pieces of an architecture in a way that will interoperate with other specific things in your environment - we're here to help. If you're asking "how should I build my environment?" you need a consultant, not serverfault

Miles Erickson

@Ward Clearly, wanting to learn to fly is a prerequisite, and a desire to remain alive is strongly recommended.

Aarthi

@MDMarra Or, more accurately: you can ask that in The Comms Room (it's literally what chat excels most at) but not on the main site.

Because the main site can't answer that well, not in the format we use.

martin's

@JoelESalas We are all "paid consultants".

MDMarra

2:38 AM

@MilesErickson Well, I think all plane purchases will be put behind "live in somewhere larger than this 600 sq ft apartment" on the to-do list.

Joel E Salas

@martin's Ok serious answer. You live in LA. There are hundreds of meetups every week. Go to them. Get your chitchat on, get the answers you want.

Miles Erickson

@MDMarra See, now, here's where our perspectives on life differ. I'd rather live in 300sf, and have an airplane, than live in 600sf without one. :-)

Joel E Salas

@MilesErickson Where did your love of aviation originate

MDMarra

@MilesErickson property is so damn expensive here :(

Miles Erickson

@JoelESalas Hard to say. My grandfather (who died before I was born) was a pilot.

martin's

2:39 AM

@JoelESalas I don't know if you are being serious, trying to be funny or something less than professional.

Joel E Salas

@martin's Have you been to a meetup? That's where the people you're looking for go.

MDMarra

@martin's He's being serious. We all are. We're here to answer properly scoped questions. Not to architect.

Ward

@MilesErickson That's the sort of thinking that leads to regional airline pilots getting paid $15k/year and spending 2 days travelling to/from the base they fly out of.

Joel E Salas

I also live in LA. Meetups are half the reason to be a professional in this town.

There's a strong community around any technology you can think of.

Aarthi

@martin's He's trying to say: you'll get a better answer for the types of questions you're asking in an informal, discussion-y meetup because of the nature of what you're asking. As I said above: our platform just doesn't do "discussion" or scoping questions well. It's not a knock against you or what you're asking. It's us trying to work to the strengths of what the engine can do well.

Joel E Salas

2:41 AM

@Aarthi Thank you

@martin's Another perspective: Either everyone's out to get you, or you're driving the wrong way on the freeway.

5

martin's

@JoelESalas Sure, and a lot of meetups are an absolute waste of time. I've been to enough of them. I even started a couple myself.

MDMarra

@martin's You act like the type of question that you've been asking is the only kind of question that exists. I've answered 1,300+ questions

Trust me. You're an outlier here

Miles Erickson

@Ward Right, but we're not talking about a pay cut here... we're talking about, would I rather mow a lawn on the weekend or fly an airplane?

MDMarra

Most users have no problem properly scoping their questions and comprehending the rules

Joel E Salas

@martin's I understand that, but what you want is an informal conversation to kick around ideas. This is not the right place.

martin's

2:43 AM

@JoelESalas My only point folks, is that the question closings are too "violent" or aggressive, if I may use these terms. If you are interested in having greater participation a FAR better approach is to engage the poster and guide him or her in the right direction.

Joel E Salas

@martin's You have to jump through a lot of hurdles (that you probably ignored) to ask your question. The violence is proportional to your negligence.

simchona

@martin's Having watched this for a while, I think people chatting with you rationally is helping to guide.

MDMarra

@martin's We're not interested in having a greater participation if that participation is open-ended, discussion-based questions

Aarthi

@MDMarra That strikes me as a bit harsh, @MDMarra -- I think @martin's perspective is more that these types of questions are valuable and worth answering. He's not wrong, in the long run, but the maintenance required to keep such posts tidy is incredibly taxing to a community.

martin's

@JoelESalas Nope, don't want informal conversation.

Joel E Salas

2:45 AM

@martin's My emergency rate is $200/hour.

Miles Erickson

@JoelESalas Bargain.

martin's

@JoelESalas OK, now I think you are being a complete jerk.

MDMarra

@Aarthi I wasn't trying to be harsh. I was commenting on his participation as a whole including his meta ban and all that.

Not just this specific conversation

simchona

@martin's Don't start calling names.

ewwhite

@MDMarra 1563 answers, bitches!

Can someone point me to the questions in question?

MDMarra

2:46 AM

@ewwhite yeah yeah yeah. My new years resolution was to finish 2013 ahead of you in rep and break the top 5

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite serverfault.com/questions/466364/…

MDMarra

This is an open-ended polling question that can't possible have a "right" answer. I agree that it should have been closed as "Not Constructive" rather than "Off Topic" but either way...it should be closed. Also, are you really surprised that you've made a bad name for yourself here considering you were so argumentative that you got banned last time you were here? — MDMarra 58 mins ago

Oops, that was my comment on it

Meant to post the whole thing, but you can click through ;)

Aarthi

@martin's This strikes me as being unfair to @JoelESalas -- as a fellow professional, I would believe you are aware of how valuable your time is. He's saying that a "formal" conversation would be on billable time. I don't think that's out of line for him to suggest.

martin's

I have been nothing but professional here. At one point lack of respect will elicit a proportionally irrational response.

Joel E Salas

@martin's Do you not see how your lack of respect for the rules here caused what you call a "violent" response?

It's the exact same thing, applied in reverse, to you.

Miles Erickson

2:49 AM

Except that closing off-topic questions is quite rational.

Going postal, not so much.

Ward

@Aarthi And we've had this discussion a bunch on meta.SF as well as seeing it on meta.SO... It takes a lot of work get a good subjective question approved (in the sense of having it stay open),

martin's

@Aarthi If you are going to quote rates then don't participate in SF or any other volunteer fora. I was making $250K a year and still donated my time and know-how to various lists and newsgroups when I had time. I never, ever, put anyone down implying that they were trying to use me as a free consultant. In tech you share what you know because others share with you and we are all elevated by it.

MDMarra

@MilesErickson Yeah, considering the past history and deleted comments on meta, etc, I'm really 50/50 on whether or not he's trolling. I'm probably going to just click the "Ignore" button if this doesn't resolve itself in the next minute or two and get back to ragging on @ewwhite

ewwhite

@martin's I just read the question.

simchona

@martin's Aarthi works for SE, by the way.

martin's

2:51 AM

@ewwhite Feedback? How should I modify it so that we can be constructive rather than, effectively, cause someone to just walk away from SF?

ewwhite

@martin's I could give you an answer... but I'm in the middle of Cloudstack hell, being on-call for my firm's public cloud offering tonight...

A lot of my answers depend on my mood at the time...

and considering that we just ran into a show-stopping, downtime-inducing bug...

Ward

Subjective, good or bad, is likely to get closed quickly. It's not "violent" or "aggressive," it's just the way SE works.

Aarthi

It's like an immune response.

It's the community's way of protecting itself by keeping its quality high and its content valuable.

ewwhite

@martin's but real feedback... I think that SF ends up as a destination for a lot of Google searches. I think there's still value in questions that may be deemed subjective.

Michael Hampton

Right. I don't want to read an endless argument about whether VMware is better than KVM or Xen and that's where those sorts of questions go.

martin's

2:53 AM

@Ward I think it is more the way SF responds rather than all of SE. I have seen cases on SO where people will gently guide newcomers into re-phrasing or re-focusing questions so that they have a better fit.

Ward

@MDMarra I can be bribed for cheap, and since I do 99.999% of the voting here, you could soon be up above Evan...

ewwhite

I think long-time users here are trigger-happy about certain topics, either because the question may be too broad...

MDMarra

@Ward I think questions that are subjective but sufficiently detailed (wfaulk's Linux question or edmund's RHEL upgrade question) do very well because they show that the OP has put sufficient research in and even though there isn't a single "right" answer it tackles an important enough topic to warrant life as long as the answers are also sufficiently detailed

ewwhite

or because people don't want to see the same types of questions over and over

Joel E Salas

@Ward That's five nines of voting!

MDMarra

2:54 AM

There are just not enough well thought out subjective questions

One paragraph and subjective isn't going to cut it. It just feels lazy. Right or wrong.

Michael Hampton

I hit "not constructive" on that question, same as most other subjective questions of this type. I don't know who the people are who use the "off topic" reason, but I wish they'd quit it.

MDMarra

@MichaelHampton It was me

ewwhite

@martin's Sometimes I'll ask subjective questions just to get real responses from people who may have more expertise... Those questions tend to get protected/locked.

martin's

@ewwhite That's exactly my impression. The other aspect of this is that the sentiments of a small-but-powerful set of users doesn't necessarily correlate with the large number of people who might look to SF as a resource. The problem is that you will never hear from these folks because they get stomped on more often than not.

MDMarra

And right after I did it I was like "son of a..."

Ward

2:55 AM

And what did you say? Each additional 9 is another order of magnitude in cost? (or was that someone else's comment on the recent 5 9's question?)

MDMarra

I meant to click NC, but muscle memory kicked in

ewwhite

@martin's We have to keep abreast of the changes in this field. The nature of questions has changed over time. There's churn in users... Some questions become outdated as tech changes. So I don't think we need to jump on questions that may seem to be duplicates or naive...

MDMarra

@martin's The largest portion of SF's "users" aren't registered. They're sent here by google. That's why it's important that things tht they come across are properly scoped, well answered, and worthwhile. That's the exact reason that things like lists or polls are not allowed. They tend to be controversial, and become outdated very quickly

Ward

@MDMarra Even wfaulk's question got some downvotes and (I think) some close votes (that have since aged out)

martin's

@MichaelHampton See, this is what I don't understand. "not constructive", to me, means that something is, well, useless. Now, I am sure there are others who have been and will be in my shoes. How is this question not constructive to them. Not debating you. I honestly want to understand.

Ward

2:58 AM

@MDMarra Sorry, you've lost a least a couple 9's of my voting...

MDMarra

@Ward It was an accident! keep reading!

not constructive
As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance.

that's the description

Michael Hampton

@martin's Let's start with the text: A not constructive close carries the following text: "As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, see the FAQ for guidance."

MDMarra

@martin's take a look here: serverfault.com/faq#close

ewwhite

@martin's I do recall an interview at a financial firm this year where the interviewers said, "Oh, we don't go to ServerFault... whenever we do land there from Google, the answers given are wrong"

Aarthi

This text, @martin's, refers to the point I made earlier: that there are simply some types of questions that our platform does not handle well.

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