Should the Network Engineering Stack relax its requirements?

Question

https://networkengineering.meta.stackexchange.com

Is it just me, or has this exchange gone a bit off the rails while attempting to achieve its intended goal?

Computer networking is a hugely important topic that affects pretty much anyone using a computer these days, which means network engineering is relevant to pretty much anyone doing networking. There's a potential audience well into the millions for this stack.

But despite the huge potential audience for Network Engineering, this stack sees about 3.6 questions a day on average. An absolutely pitiful number when you consider that's about half the questions per day that the Quantum Computing exchange sees.

And if that's not bad enough, about half the questions on the stack are closed by a small handful of power users with pretty much the exact same copy-pasted boiler plate every time. They've essentially accumulated enough power to completely dictate what happens on the exchange entirely by themselves.

The closing is purportedly done to keep the exchange focused on its goal of "a space for network engineers to ask and answer questions about professionally managed networks without all the noise of home networking and consumer-grade devices that are of no interest to network engineers"

But when you consider there's something like 100x more network engineers than quantum computing engineers - it sure seems like a sign of a stack that, for all practical purposes, no professional network engineers actually use.

Seeing roughly a quarter of acceptable questions per day that the already very niche Quantum Computing exchange sees, the Network Engineering exchange seems to essentially just be an exclusive community for an extremely small group of power users. Is that what is actually intended for the exchange? Should this exchange be encouraged to relax its requirements and refocus its objective?

Answer 1

While your input is appreciated, you need to point out which of the 'on' topics you'd like to have expanded and why. As with all SE sites, NE is driven by its community. If you can get a majority in the community here to back your suggestions they're very likely to get realized.

NE was created as a site specifically for questions about professionally managed networks in a business environment - in contrast and in addition to already present sites like Server Fault which centers on managing information technology systems in a business environment, or perhaps Super User for computer enthusiasts and power users.

So, it's not that you have no place at all to ask your questions - you just need to pick the right one.

Answer 2

"Computer networking" is not necessarily (actually, very rarely) Network engineering. The majority of closed questions are very much off-topic (homework, home networking, "linksys" routers, asked&answered many times, etc.) There are, and have been, many true engineering questions asked and answered over the years. Most professional network engineers know their job, so they rarely need to ask for input.

(Many of the high rep NE users have asked no questions, or asked and answered their own question(s). That doesn't mean NE has no place.)