In the last week, there have been discussions of telco issues (the "DACS failure" thread) and tools (the "System And Network Monitoring" thread) that seem to have been generally received as on-topic.
But why WAS the System and Network Monitoring thread on-topic? As the "creator" of that topic, I'd like to think it was, but in reality, all it would really "affect" is a single provider. Asking how someone else monitors their internal network is very similar to asking someone how they configure their DNS server. I'm not saying that you're WRONG. My point here is that we really don't have any clear-cut guidelines. The old adage about "if I can't program it into my router, its not valid" would certainly flunk out the Monitoring topic, that's for sure, since the main thrust of the request was how to monitor individual servers (albeit about a thousand of them).
I'd MUCH prefer two meaningful messages to a dozen complaints from people who don't know how to contact a NOC or configure DNS.
Agreed. I'd much prefer low-volume-high-signal to the opposite. I just think we have a "charter" as it were that is a little too vague, and leaves too much up for debate as to what is on/off-topic. I mean, you can state what you did about what you think is on/off-topic, and I might agree with you, but the charter is much more vague, and leads itself to ambiguity. I hate rules and regulations as much as the next guy, but I think it needs to be spelled out somewhere much more clearly than it already is. That's all. My point wasn't to claim that the Exodus topic necessarily WAS on-topic, but that there's nothing that clearly states it WASN'T. Ya follow? D