Off-topic confusion

Question

This is regarding my question here, and the subsequent back-and-forth I had with moderator @RonMaupin: "Dumb" conference-phone device?

Before posting this question on NE, I was unsure where on Stack Exchange it belonged. I Googled "stack exchange telecom" and found these 2 posts:

• Network Engineering Meta: Questions about telecom networks
• Stack Exchange Meta: Networking stackexchange

Seeing as the NE Meta post was more recent and the answer was very emphatic that NE is the proper place for telecom questions ("From POTS to ISDN to VoIP to IP telephony, all are part of a network."), I felt confident that NE was the right place for my question.

I posted my question, and shortly afterwards Ron put it on hold because of product recommendations being off-topic. I respectfully explained that my question was not asking for recommendations, but asking if such a device exists at all. He apparently agreed, because the off-topic reason changed to it not being "about professionally managed networks in a business environment. " Again I explained that this was in fact for use in a business environment, as I had written in my question. He commented that "Phones are not on-topic here" (in contradiction to the NE Meta post above) and explained that I can post my disagreement on NE Meta. So here I am.

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To summarize:

1. Are telecom questions on-topic for Network Engineering?
   • If not, then this NE Meta answer should be deleted or edited
   • If yes, then:
2. Why was my question on NE marked off-topic?

Answer 1

the off-topic reason changed to it not being "about professionally managed networks in a business environment. "

As I explained, that is not the reason. Yes, questions about a telephone network are on-topic, the same way questions about a data network are on-topic. Unfortunately, questions about the hosts (endpoints) of the networks are not on-topic here. You are asking about an end-device (host) of a network, and questions about those are off-topic on Network Engineering. If you had asked about a device you could connect to your network that would let you type a message and send it to someone else, that too would be off-topic.

What is on-topic are the devices that create the network (routers, switches, etc.), but there are a couple of caveats to even on-topic questions, one of which is:

"hardware that has a paid support option (enterprise/provider class products, some small business class devices)"

Answer 2

I would suggest the moderator at this SE site to actually read people's question first. I posted a question about recommendation and feasibility of different approaches in setting up networking for a cluster, which is clearly relevant to this site. But the moderator don't even read it through or understand my question, and immediately mark it off-topic and hold the condescending attitude "You should do your homework", "We network engineers don't recommend", "It's your own design problem" as if he's some kind of noble elite.

Just for the record, I consulted several sysadmins before asking the question and did extensive search on the topic but couldn't really find a definitive answer. So I posted the question here in hope some experienced network engineer maybe could offer some pointer that I can refer to further investigate and research.

I strongly recommend the moderator to take a look at the other stackexchange sites to see how the other moderators are running their sites and realize what a poor community culture he's trying to build here.

This is not a special SE site, and you are not an elite Mr.KnowItAll. So before you so quickly mark someone's post as off-topic, think twice. The knowledge is constructed by the entire community. There might be someone in the community who is actually more generous than you to be willing to help. This is the seriously most unfriendly tech site I've ever been on. I think even Linus Torvalds is behaving more friendly than the paranoid moderator.