Well, right now this is on private beta soon to go to public beta, and at some point official production. For the looks of this private beta, I have to say the response is pretty good.
As far as hardware/software configuration problems, yes it's most of the time more specific, but I think most of the time we're not really looking for the solution, but guidance as to what else to try. Even talking/writing about the problem serves as a helpful trouble-finding tool as you tend to ask yourself the questions you might expect from IT admins here.
Basically, it will be up to admins here how usable serverfault will be FOR THEM AND FOR OTHERS. The procedures for troubleshooting will be up to each one of us to decide (here's mine):
- Find problem, get stuck
- Search ServerFault for archived issues related to yours
- Post question
- Keep researching (while updating question page for answers)
- However you find the answer, post it on ServerFault and award the answer (or award someone else's answer).
Pretty much keep a knowledge base of questions<>answers for others to search in the future. At some point maybe people will find the ServerFault database more useful than asking questions... and that's not such a bad thing.