Some Updates to the FAQ

The next time you’re taking a look at our Frequently Asked Questions list, you may notice some small changes:

A few months ago, we had some discussion on meta about whether home networking questions were within the scope of Super User. The community proposed via Super User Meta that we update the FAQ to more directly represent that home networking questions are allowed on Super User, and always have been – it just hadn’t been specifically mentioned in the FAQ.

In the course of this discussion, it was also agreed that we should include a statement to the effect of questions dealing with corporate networks and support being off-topic, as they are more appropriate for Server Fault.

After some editing and discussion, the following changes were decided upon:

• Adding to the “If you have a question about” section: personal and home computer networking
• Adding to the “question is not about” section: issues specific to corporate IT support and networks

Please note that these changes to the FAQ do not represent a change in policy for Super User — questions which were previously on-topic are still on-topic. We just changed the language to make the site’s policies more explicit.

Several people have already asked about the distinction of professional IT support and corporate networking. Increasingly, the line between “business” and “consumer” computers is blurring. Indeed, the definition of what constitutes a computer is itself a topic of debate.

To clarify: any question where the answer would be essentially the same whether you asked it about your workplace computer or home computer is perfectly valid on Super User. Data recovery, installing operating systems, connecting between computers, and so forth are all still welcome. The types of IT questions we discourage are things like volume licensing, active directory, business-grade routers, mass image deployment, and other issues which are irrelevant to non-corporate users. These are the sorts of thing we mean by “issues specific to corporate IT support”.

If you have any further questions, feel free to leave them in the comments on this post, and the Super User moderation team will respond to your queries. You can also reach us in the Ask a Moderator Chat Room.