Critique my question about configuration for /dev/urandom

Question

This is about the following question: What do I need to configure, to make sure my software uses /dev/urandom?

Please critique the question. If you believe it has violated any rules, please cite the rule that it violates, with a citation or link to the rule.

One person mentioned they believe that my request for "one piece of software per answer" violates the StackExchange rules. I've researched the rules, and as best as I can tell, I have not found any rule that it violates. I also believe the format is better for the community -- or, at least, that some deference should be provided to the question-asker when there is no clear reason to object to it.

I've read the faq, and I don't see anything in the FAQ that this violates. This is an actual problem to be solved; it is not open-ended or hypothetical; it is not a rant; my answer is not provided along with the question; and not all answers are equally valid. Indeed, some answers may be more useful to people than others. Also, some answers may be more accurate than others. For these reasons, I think it is useful to be able to vote separately on each answer, or to downvote those answers that are incorrect.

I understand that questions like "Can you provide a list of all books on computer security?" are not a good fit for our community, because they are too subjective. This sometimes is summarized by saying Infinite List of X questions are bad. However I don't think those criticisms apply to this particular question.

Is this an Infinite List of X question? The term is frankly not defined, except by example, so I don't think it makes sense to mindlessly dismiss my question as Infinite List of X. Instead, we have to look at the examples and the arguments given why Infinite List of X questions are bad. Typically, the criticisms mention polls or surveys, which are indeed problematic; but I don't think they are analogous to my question. One reason sometimes given why Infinite List of X questions are bad is that "every answer is equally valid" or "there are zero meaningful criteria for evaluation"; I don't think that applies to my question, as explained above. Another criticism that's mentioned is that these questions are often "copy-pasted content, not original contributions", but that's not relevant to my question.

Discussion?

Should the question and all answers be deleted entirely? Would it be better to not have the information on this site, than to have it in this format?

Added 5/1: Well, that was fast. 11 hours after this question was posted, my answers were forcibly edited to merge them (without my permission), and my question was edited to change it. So I guess that means this discussion topic is now closed, and the community has spoken. Got it.

I would have liked the chance to respond to some of the latest comments in this discussion, but I guess that's now irrelevant. (And I'll point out that still no one has cited any rule that my original question violated.) Oh well.

Answer 1

The problem with your format is that none of your posts below the question are answers. They're items, which if combined would make an answer.

Each answer is supposed to solve the problem on its own. In the present state, none of your posts solve the problem, they only tackle a small part of it.

Multiple answers are supposed to provide different ways of solving the problem. Let's say I want to suggest a different way of ensuring that mod_ssl uses /dev/urandom. So I would post another answer about mod_ssl. If everybody does that, the result will be a complete mess, with a few posts about mod_ssl and a few posts about Postfix and a few posts about OpenLDAp and …. There wouldn't even be a way of filtering the posts about mod_ssl among the crowd. And since I can next add my answer about Joe's HTCPCP server, this is indeed an “infinite list of X” question.

Voting on answers is supposed to reflect the accuracy, clarity, completenes and other qualities of the answer. Ideally, an answer has a higher score than another if it is better by these measures than the other answer. What does it mean if your Postfix answer is more upvoted than your OpenLDAP answer? That Postfix is better than OpenLDAP and I should start using it to serve my user and host databases? There are, indeed, “zero meaningful criteria for evaluation”.

This isn't an issue that's come up often on this site, if at all. Other subjects are more prone to generating such lists of items. The result is a mess. Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange ran into this issue early on, and ended up mentioning an explicit prohibition on “list questions” in its FAQ. However, this is not intrisically a policy that is specific to SF&F: the FAQ only makes it explicit that lists of items are not well-suited to the Stack Exchange format.

When I read your question, I expected that you were after general advice regarding system configuration to use /dev/urandom. Given what you posted as answers, it seems that you are instead after advice for certain specific programs (mod_ssl, Postfix, etc.). Such specific advice should be in one question per program. I have therefore reversed my vote and voted to close your question as too broad. Please ask about each program separately, so that a person looking after advice for Postfix can find a Posftix question, etc.

Addendum: the answers by David Schwartz and Yoav Aner don't target any specific software. They should not be lost in a long list of items.

Answer 2

I think @AviD and @Gilles are right.

We need a 'one best answer' with all these existing answers rolled into one. From the perspective of someone coming here to find the answer, they should see one top-voted answer with everything they need in it.

This could work from the existing answers being rolled into one - keeping those headings.

There are very few scenarios where a list of many answers works here on SE.

From Jeff Atwood: If it is possible for a question to have two valid answers from the same person, the odds are high that it's a bad question.