Server Fault 2014 Election

Grace Note

19:23

Welcome all! This room is intended as a place to converse with candidates, discuss moderator traits, etc. For general discussion related to Server Fault, go here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/127/the-comms-room

If you have questions about the election process itself, please ask your question on the Server Fault Meta Site. Remember, folks stepping up to lead this community are committing a significant amount of their time, please keep all discourse civil and constructive.

Markus W Mahlberg

20:20

Anybody here?

Michael Hampton

Yes, anybody is here!

Basil

20:33

It seems like serverfault is having an identity crisis.

Markus W Mahlberg

So, does anybody have a suggestion?

Michael Hampton

@MarkusWMahlberg Regarding what in particular?

Shog9

Does anyone know who's on first?

Markus W Mahlberg

IMHO, it should be rather somebody with proper soft skills. The technical skills are secondary, I think. @MichaelHampton: Nominations.

Michael Hampton

@MarkusWMahlberg Has anyone nominated themselves yet? As far as I know you can't nominate a third party.

Markus W Mahlberg

20:42

I briefly thought of it - but I know my temper too well. ;)

@MichaelHampton: you seem to be around for a while. Interested?

Michael Hampton

@MarkusWMahlberg Interested in what?

Markus W Mahlberg

@MichaelHampton: becoming a moderator. ;)

Michael Hampton

@MarkusWMahlberg Well, yes, as a matter of fact. That's how I became one.

Markus W Mahlberg

Hahahhaaaaaaa!

Now accepting sign ups for my new course "How to look like a complete idiot, Part 1: Crashcourse"

Too bad – I think this is an important matter. On the other hand I know that I won't be able to sustainably put work into that.

Basil

Soft skills, in this context, will mean keeping the people with the technical credentials around.

or redefining the site to not exclude hobbyist IT or devops questions

Michael Hampton

20:56

I don't really think excluding "DevOps" questions is a good idea. But I really do want to exclude "Visual Studio" type questions; I don't think SF should be helping developers set up their workstations.

Chris S

We really need someone who will be most active 0800-1400 UTC. Please consider that when nominating and voting.

4

Markus W Mahlberg

Good points. @MichaelHampton: is it hard to keep a balance between... ...true decisions and the other points.

Michael Hampton

I've posted a bit about that on MSO, ironically.

Markus W Mahlberg

@ChrisS: Hm. UTC +1...

Chris S

I really don't think this election should be about "the direction of the site". Moderators are janitors first and foremost. The community largely decides direction, the moderators just cleanup after people who disregard the notices warning them they're off-topic.

Michael Hampton

20:59

It shouldn't be, but I'm pretty sure it's going to happen anyway.

Markus W Mahlberg

And a DevOps guy ;). But I agree. Moderators "enforce" the rules, they should not make them.

Chris S

Eh, I don't think anything would change even if we got a moderator who wanted to be heavy handed about changing the site... The moderator mechanisms really aren't setup for that, nor intended for that. At best they could abuse their privileges to that end, but that would be short lived.

Also, plenty of people have lamented the direction SF has been heading for years now. Nobody has come up with a good fix. And you don't need to be a mod to post good ideas to mSF...

Markus W Mahlberg

Still, the question is valid: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? @ChrisS: in which way lamented? The only thing I ask myself wether the sites don't become over specialized. networkengineering.stackoverflow.com is an example. I really ask myself if that wouldn't be included in the superuser.com. But that's about it...

Chris S

@MarkusWMahlberg Let not talk about NE, because I'm still very unhappy about that one.

@MarkusWMahlberg Lamented in that it's ~50% "Support for Stack Overflow". Just look at the OP of a dozen or so questions. About half will have high/higher reputation on SO than SF. They're programmers who have been drafted to figure out why some server isn't working correctly, or why their dev environment isn't working correctly.

Just being from SO isn't an issue in and of itself however. The problem is that they have no concern for the supportability, ongoing management, or problem prevention (ie, no concern for "operations", they have a developer mentality "make it work", which serves them well in development tasks). They just want a quick fix, they commonly need to be spoon-fed the answer, and they return very little to the community.

Markus W Mahlberg

@ChrisS: Sorry for Commiting this blunder... Ah. DevOps via self education, drafting and laying on of hands. Yes, I see the problem – especially for my profession. Dodgy.

Chris S

21:18

There's a rather nice write-up somewhere about Help Vampires. The very short version: New community, experts flood into the new paradise. Help Vampires find community slowly, over time take over. Experts flee the Vampires to the next community. SF is somewhere in the middle of that process. We'd like to stem or even reverse the tide, but it nobody's come up with a practical solution

Even putting up a paywall would just result in ExpertSexChange.com; I've seen that crap too, it's got at least as many Help Vampires - those people paid good money, they demand a solution, from experts of the community... tends to drive those experts away unless you can pay them really well.... like a job, like a consultant; which they didn't hire in the first place because they were trying to avoid that high cost.

Michael Hampton

Whenever I see a help vampire, I just put a stake through its heart. Works great, but there's way too many of them...

Markus W Mahlberg

A downward spiral, I see. We had similar problems in ther German Wikipedia. The bottom line was that AGF (assume good faith) only works as long as all see it as the common denominator. I had no word for it until now, but Help Vampire describes it very well. I think I even noticed an elaborated form: the wage slave help vampire, housed at programming sweat shops.

Markus W Mahlberg

21:35

The problem actually was the porn mafia – paid authors which spammed articles about porn stars with a brigade of people arguing to the death why deleting this or that one would not be tolerable.

Both groups break AGF: the help vampires by just consuming without the intention to give back, and the porn mafia by misusing Wikipedia by ignoring the spirit of Wikipedia for their own good.

Just to let you know, there wasn't a satisfying solution, either: I quitted working in the "incoming control" after 3 years because I could not stand it any more.

Chris S

Interesting. Makes me wonder how sites like SO thrive...

Michael Hampton

SO actually gets at least an order of magnitude more crap than we do.

But they also have a lot more people who can downvote it off the front page within seconds.

Markus W Mahlberg

You can bet on that. I come across a new "I am developing the next big thing with a MEAN stack. It is like X, but cooler. I don't have a single line of code, or have the slightest clue about programming whatsoever, but it is supposed to do this and that. Can you give me some example code in the order of... ...everything?"

About every other minute.

RobM

21:54

There's no problem with actual DevOps questions - the problem is that its taken as *wink* *wink* lets just let the devs manage the servers too or the ops people write code instead of staffing both areas properly because its cheaper and from CxO level its all just "playing with computers".

Sorting through that is going to become an issue for any moderator. A thankless task... which reminds me, thanks once again to those of you who are mods.

Chris S

Okay... how to we get a lot more experts who can downvotes it and such?

Michael Hampton

@RobM Been there done that

14

A: Topicality of "DevOps" Questions

I closed that question, so perhaps I should weigh in here. First, there's the term "DevOps". This, as I understand it from reading The Phoenix Project and paying attention to Gene Kim et al., is breaking down the artificial barriers between development and operations, and having them work closel...

RobM

absolutely @MichaelHampton

Markus W Mahlberg

22:17

Hm, as a specialist for service transition, I make a living of the difference of the very distinct skill sets dev and ops have. But I can confirm that most CxOs tend to have a special point of view.

Highlight: "But we are doing Scrum! The team has to be able to implement all user stories within the constraints! What happened?" Well, it turned out that nobody told the development team that the product had to deal with like 4 times more users than initially thought and needed to be run on an extremely strict 3-tier architecture - clustered. Of course Scrum didn't work and the team was to blame.

But as for the key problem, it may make sense to make higher reputation a requirement. Or actually make asking questions expensive on a virtual level – you ask a question, you have to pay with reputation.

Iain

22:41

@MarkusWMahlberg interesting idea. My version is that (at least on the professional sites) you should have to give back to the community. Your first question is free but subsequent questions require that you provide good quality (as determined by community voting) answers before you can ask more. In my view any professional should be able to do this.

Michael Hampton

I'd go even farther and require 10 reputation on this site to ask a question.

Iain

I'm just being pink-and-fluffy

Markus W Mahlberg

I think the relation between points given and points taken should be carefully considered. IMHO, asking questions should become relatively cheaper the more reputation one gains. He/She/it has proven the willingness to give back more than enough.

Falcon Momot

You know, I think there's a good possibility the new question ban system might already have solved that little aspect of the problem

Iain

@MarkusWMahlberg indeed

Michael Hampton

22:56

The new question rate limit intervenes sooner, but I'm not sure it's soon enough.

Markus W Mahlberg

The problem is that it is to doubt that the community will vote for such actions. Can you imagine the outcry when those Dark Side DevOps report that they have actually put some time and effort into solving problems? ;)

Transcript for

Server Fault 2014 Election