text:
Editor keeps making unwanted modifications to my answer
I'm not really sure where to ask for moderator help. @ChrisStratton is engaging in an edit war on my answer to Are clone-specific questions on topic for this site? because he doesn't like my (and, presumably, the original poster's) use of the terminology "clone." I've asked him not change my answer in this way, undone his changes several times now, added additional explanation to my answer to indicate to all that I'm using the term "clone" in a way different from what he seems to feel is the only approved way of using it, and asked him to add his own answer or comments if he disagrees with my answer. Unfortunately, he persists in reintroducing his change to my answer.
What should one do in this situation?
[Side note: the rollback history may look a little odd; I didn't understand how rollbacks actually work until just now so I both failed to rollback his original unwanted change (instead changing it back by hand) and did some incorrect rollbacks while finding out that the link rolls back not the commit it's on but to the commit its on.]

What should one do in this situation?

Exactly what you have done. First try and sort it out between yourselves, and when that fails, bring it to our attention here. I have locked the answer so it cannot be edited while it gets sorted out.
I guess this falls under the broader heading of how do we, on this site, define "clone". Personally I try not to use it as the word "clone" but couple it with "cheap Chinese" to specifically indicate a device which tries to look like the real thing but is built with some components replaced with cheaper equivalents (CH340G for example). They are as close to the genuine article for new users to be duped into thinking they have a real one when they don't. Yet by the strictest definition they aren't a clone - a clone is an exact copy.
Much of the time the user asking the question doesn't even know that they have a clone / counterfeit / copy / derivative board - they are just asking about using it or getting it going (9 times out of ten it's a CH340G problem, but since they don't know what that is they're looking in the wrong direction anyway and installing FTDI drivers for some reason...).
The problem with this kind of site is the number of pedants that abound who love to focus on one specific word in an answer that they don't agree with and cause merry hell because of it. It makes them feel important in their small world. The EE site is full of them (which is the main reason I never go there any more).
If the meaning of the answer is clear (as yours is) the exact semantic meaning of specific terms within it is of no importance. Whether you call it a clone, a derivative, or a pile of rancid dog vomit spewed forth by a disreputable fabrication house in the wilds of Malaysia, is of no intrinsic importance.
However, I would say that the editor in question is in the wrong editing your answer like that. Raise his concerns in comments, sure, so you can discuss it and make any changes you both agree with, but acting like a Grammar Nazi? No. Certainly not.

I'm glad to hear that my approach of going with what I think the question is really talking about (including in "clones" what some would call "derivatives") is reasonable. That's not to say I disagree that distinguishing between the two is a reasonable point to raise. So how does this post go about getting unlocked again at some point?

Once you and Chris have come to an agreement on wording (or Chris has eased off a little), which is best done in chat, the answer can be unlocked.

Ok, sounds good. I've created a chat room for discussion of this; I'm not clear on how to invite @ChrisStratton to it, but presumably he'll see this comment.

Look Alterno is correct that the linked site starts with the headline "Building an Arduino on a Breadboard" and is titled "Arduino - Setting up an Arduino on a breadboard" (the title showing on the tab heading for that page).
And indeed the article is about making a breadboard Arduino.
Thanks for the comments in your answer about my article about making a "torch locator" using the Arduino IDE. This wasn't really a breadboard, nor a clone. ;)
I would personally think of a clone as something which is similar to an existing Arduino board (or indeed virtually identical) - hence the word "clone". Something that is pin-compatible I would refer to as Arduino-compatible. And something that uses the IDE and libraries, but has its own hardware design, would be called, ah, I'm not sure. "In the Arduino spirit?" maybe.

As for your actual question, I agree with Majenko. Try to amicably sort it out first, and if that isn't possible flag the answer for moderator attention.

I have an Arduino IDE and I wrote Arduino C. Whatever run my sketch at the end of the USB cable is an Arduino or Arduino clone.

Oh well, from Cambridge Dictionary a clone can be "a computer that operates in a very similar way to the one that it was copied from". Since the keyword here is "operates" and not "looks like" then I will accept your definition. Perhaps you can convince Chris Stratton of that as well.

Keep in mind, the original post states that, "there may be cases where a clone's features, layout, and/or spec deviate from the norm." If you think a clone can't do that, I think you have an issue with the question, not my answer. While I think that other definitions of "clone" are reasonable (perhaps even desirable), I don't think the one the question author uses is so wrong that answers shouldn't follow it.

I have perhaps unwisely commented on parts of the underlying problem that were not part of the meta-question. The question was what to do about an edit war, and I think that was answered.

I've seen a similar situation on another SE site. I think the following posts on SE:Meta may be relevant here:

How to avoid Edit-Wars?
Who has the final authority in an edit war? OP or a moderator?

My personal view is that the main function of tags is to help people to quickly find content on a particular topic. As such, tags should relate directly to the content of the question.
When problems arise, it's generally because the meaning of the tag(s) can be interpreted in different ways. In such cases, I would probably either refine the definitions of the tag(s) to provide clarity, or simply include both tags.
In this case, the dispute is about the interpretation of a word in the text rather than a tag. While this might be used as a search term, that is not its primary function. I'd suggest that if the meaning of the word is thought to be unclear, or might be misinterpreted, just specify how you are defining it in the body of the answer.

The war started with a dispute about a single word. Curt said clone and Chris changed it to breadboard. Curt changed it back to clone, then Chris changed it again ... etc.
But the link Curt provided points to a page titled Building an Arduino on a Breadboard. Chris is right in correcting it. The text in a link must match the title in the page.
It's not about clone vs derivative, or some oscure regulation. It's just being consistent.

The way Chris went about it is what irks me. He should have raised it in comments rather than just barging in and changing someone else's post.

@Majenko. I agree. It's clear that Curt wants to use the word clone, so trying to edit it to breadboard is pointless.

In the context of the original post, an "Arduino" on a breadboard is a type of "clone." Given that "clones," in the sense given in the original post, are what the whole thing is about, I feel pretty strongly that "clone" is the word to be using there. (However, as I've said before, if people strongly believe that we should not be using the word clone for these things, I welcome them posting their own answers discussing this.)

@CurtJ.Sampson As I said: The link text in your answer must match the page title. This "clone vs breadboard vs derivatives" dispute is irrelevant. You can use whatever word you want. I'm fine with whatever your choose.

"Link text must match page title" seems like a silly rule to me. The answer should state what it needs to state as clearly as possible, and not be bound by arbitrary rules like that.

The question asks:

However, there may be cases where a clone's [emphasis mine] features, layout, and/or spec deviate from the norm, whether by mistake or by design.
Should this site include questions which relate to specific clones, or would that be off-topic?

When a board has "different specifications" or "different features," it's clearly not a "clone" in the sense of the arduino.cc blog definition because it's not in the category of "exact (or almost exact) replicas of Arduino boards with a different branding."
In fact, having different features, they fall exactly into what that blog post calls, "derivatives":

These are products that are derived from the Arduino hardware design but they innovate either by providing a different layout and features [emphasis mine]  often to better serve a specific market.

So my argument is:

The questioner is clearly talking about what that article calls "derivatives," and not talking about what that article calls "clones."

This is not utterly unreasonable: it's not terrible distortion of the word "clone" to use it in this sense nor is the questioner going far outside the common usage (as far as I know) of this word in the Arduino community.

Thus, it's reasonable to focus on answering his question using the terminology he gives, rather than saying, e.g., a) yes, clones are perfectly fine for discussion here, but b) no, what you call clones are not at all suitable for discussion.

Feel free to disagree/clarify/whatever in comments on this answer or, better yet, post an answer on the original question that you feel addresses your issues with the use of the word "clone."
(Side note: I am totally open to arguments that a) I am not using "clone" in the sense of the questioner, or b) I should not use it in the sense of the questioner.)


text:
What to do with "company secrets"?
After answering a post today, OP said to me:

Actually, my real code is not as short as it looks in this demo code.
  I am not allowed to post the real code for some privacy reasons of the
  company I work for.

That's after I taking the trouble of actually testing his sketch and timing his execution. I ended working in a posted problem that it is not the real problem. Total waste of time, IMHO.
What must be this site politics with question that involved secret components?

As long as the OP posts a SSCCE that demonstrates the actual problem then I see no problem with it not being their "live" (NDA) code. However if they post an SSCCE that itself works flawlessly (or is broken in some other way than they state, as is often the case) or a snippet of code that can't itself be verified, then yes they are wasting everyone's time (even their own). They should have seen that the SSCCE they posted didn't exhibit the stated problem, which would have given them some more pointers to where the actual problem is (that's one of the points of doing an SSCCE - it helps to track down the problem to a specific cause before asking for help).
Of course, if they don't understand the concept of the SSCCE then they should first be educated by directing them to http://sscce.org/

Should I flag it? Should I vote for closing it? Should you have closed it?

Step 1 is to request better code that demonstrates the problem. If that isn't forthcoming (as is often the case) then vote to close it as "unclear what you're asking". I'll probably come along and close it anyway with my question closing hammer. ;)

You answered the question in good faith, and if you can reproduce a problem in the posted code, and post a solution, then that may help someone some day.
If the OP comes back and says "actually that isn't the real code" then you can request the real code, or say "pffft, in that case I can't help you".
This sort of thing isn't that uncommon. For example, people reduce their sketch size to make it small enough to post, and that frees up enough RAM that the sketch no longer fails due to running out of RAM.

I particularly like the phrasing of "pffft, in that case I can't help you". I may have to get it printed on a T-shirt. :)

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
What to do with low quality posts?
Yesterday I review several years old question with zero answers, voting to close them, which started a debate with perl1234 and gre_gor.
I voted with this explanation:

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's a year old
  question with no answers.

And perl1234 commented:

not being answered is not a valid reason to close a question. I've
  answered questions that were years old. Just because nobody had an
  answer at the time the question was asked doesn't mean it should be
  closed. The sad thing is that if you would just make a little effort
  to look at these questions you're trying to close you would have found
  valid reasons for closing many of them

Well, I'm really wanting to close them because they are low quality post, but that is subjetive criteria, and I thought better to backup that with a objective parameter. Hence, "one year old, no answer".
Of course, not every year old, no answer question is a low quality post. That's why I read everyone one of them and vote to close the most evident culprits.
I think this a best place to explain what I'm doing and reach a community consensus about how to proceed.
Rationality
The problem with Arduino SE is too many low quality posts, which is evident when you also visit other sites, like Electrical SE or Bicycle SE (long time member there).
There are several markers that identify a low quality post:

First post by a newly create user.
From user that never returns to Arduino SE for a year or more.
No answers, no comments.
No sketch, no schematic, no product identification, poorly written question.
No effort in finding a solution (Arduino SE, Google).
Obvious lack of minimal training in electricity and/or programming.
Demands for complete solution (sketch and/or schematic).

If a question has had no answer for a year or more, it will never have it. There is no point in keeping that question in the site, because even the OP has no interest in the answer.
How to deal with it
The problem is that low quality post isn't one of the reason for closing post, and the other reasons are not fit for the purpose.
A too broad question can be restricted. An unclear what you are asking can be clarified. An off topic can be migrated, and low quality post generally are not duplicated, nor opinion-based.
A low quality post is beyond redemption. There is noting you can do to improve it. They aren't even wrong.
And the question is: What we do to filter out low quality post?

How about voting the question down? That is what voting is for. You could also attach a comment explaining why you did it. That might encourage others to vote it down. With enough downvotes it will be closed.

If you feel strongly enough about it you can flag it for moderator attention, as a very low quality post. Then we can close it.

If I flag this post ... will you close it?

Let's not double the work moderators have to do by first asking if we will close something if you flag it, and then waiting for a reply, and then flagging it. :) If you feel strongly enough just flag it and see what happens.
In that particular question's case the question isn't really all that low quality, and in any case you can't flag questions as very low quality (only answers). (Low quality is for gibberish answers, not just ones that don't answer the question).
The design of Stack Exchange is that it should be self-moderating. That is you, the users, can moderate to a large extent by voting to close, or voting a question down (something you can do without a rep penalty). Moderators are there for extreme cases like insults, spam or things that need to be dealt with quickly.
If only one person down-votes a question, it can't be too bad, right? But if 5 down-vote it then it gets closed. (Caveat: I can't find a reference that proves that particular point, but I think enough down-votes will close a question).
See https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-down
Another alternative for you is to edit the question and improve it.

I am sympathetic to what you are trying to achieve here. A while back I went through old questions and voted-to-close or downvoted them. If we don't do that we end up with a lot of junk questions with no answers. I think what will happen is, if you down-vote, and comment, the question gets bumped to the home page, and then others may look at it and also down-vote it, so you can get community consensus on them. :)

If I flag this post (https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/45905/how-to-combine-string-variables-to-form-url), will you close it?

After some meditation I think that downvoting is the most visible way to mark something as LQP, because voting for closing has no much effect unless four other people agreed.

What perl1234 meant was, that you should not close question just because they are old and with no answers, because it doesn't mean it's low quality.
Unless they are actually low quality (no effort, too broad, unclear, gimme the codez, etc.), there is nothing wrong with them being left open.
I am not against closing old low quality question, if they are actually bad, just use a valid reason for the close vote.

First post by a newly create user.
From user that never returns to Arduino SE for a year or more.
No answers, no comments.

These by itself are not valid reasons to close it.

No sketch, no schematic, no product identification, poorly written question.

This can be closed as unclear.

No effort in finding a solution (Arduino SE, Google).

This can be closed as too broad.

Obvious lack of minimal training in electricity and/or programming.

This can be closed as unclear or too broad, depending if he can't explain what he wants or he expect from us too much.

Demands for complete solution (sketch and/or schematic).

This can be closed as too broad.

You also seem to have been a little bit sloppy in seeing what is a question without an answer.
This question had an answer by OP edited into the question. I edited that one out of the question and into an answer.
And this question doesn't look like low quality to me. The problem could be replicated with the provided code (assuming it actually does what he says) and a solution could be posted.
Also, if you want to discourage low quality questions, you should not answer them. If you give them what they want, they might come back with another low quality question, even if their previous question was closed.

I'm not saying that first post is LQP. I'm saying that LQP are generally the first post by a new user. I use those as signal of a possible LQP.

You said https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/24470/slice-byte-stream-into-bit-pieces has one answer, but you added that yesterday, after my post. And it's a pure programming question (bit manipulation), totally unrelated to Arduino. And the answer is only applicable to that particular case, and not very useful for anyone else. And the OP's last visit is Jan 2017, which doesn't signal a great interes in Arduiino.

You don't think https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/31365/can-i-get-my-rgbw-neopixel-strip-to-loop-perfectly-by-adjusting-rainbowfade2whit is LQP. I respect your opinion, but the fact is that nobody found valuable enough to answer it, and it's adding nothing to Arduino SE:

If you want to work together on this, you can make crafted searches (in the search box at the top of the page). For example:
answers:0 closed:0  isanswered:no votes:0

That shows a whole lot of unclosed questions with no answers and no votes. They might be candidates for:

Trying to answer them
Down-voting
Improving the question
Asking for clarification
Voting to close

You can also add a date range, eg.
created:..2017-01-01

That shows questions created earlier than 2017.

You can't close a question because it doesn't have answers, but you can and should vote to close a question if it has been long abandoned by the asker in a state which makes it unanswerable - and especially if they've failed to respond to comments requesting clarification.
Naturally not having answers (or having only terrible ones) often follows from being unanswerable.  But the closing has to follow from the rule violation of posting and then failing to correct an unanswerable question, not from the community's disinterest in answering.

I think gre_gor has stated it beautifully in his answer. Nick Gammon also makes very good points.
I would just like to add that we don't want to discourage anyone from voting to close a question, providing it is for a valid reason. Even more, I encourage more people to leave a comment on why they think it should be closed. I commend Look Alterno for doing this.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How to deal with dead question?
What we do with dead still-open questions?
By dead I mean that the OP had not return to Arduino SE for over a year (and probably will never come back), and therefore the question will be never closed, even if it had acceptable answers posted.
Case: Where do serialport names come from?.

Just answer for the future visitor that did an internet search for the question and upvote any good answers already on the question.
A large part of SE philosophy is to help the future visitor as much as the current asker.

If the OP never comes back, the question will remain open forever, even with an answer. How do we close it if it was already answered?

It doesn't need to be "closed", when there is a upvoted answer the system will consider it answered in all but name.

Unfortunately, many of these are weak questions where only poor answers not deserving upvotes are likely to be posted.  Often the question itself must be closed as it is either unclear or not a fit for the Stack Exchange model.

I don't think that you necessarily mean closed but rather has an accepted answer, and as such, is thus removed from the list of unanswered questions. I noticed such a question yesterday: HC-12 with Arduino Mega.
It is a reasonably presented question, with code and a schematic, and it seems as if the user had found a solution. However, an answer was never posted, and even though a suitable answer could be extracted from the comments (see What if a comment solve the question?), the OP may never return to mark it as accepted and therefore remove the question from the unanswered list of questions.
Another example, but where there is already an answer, is How to get the server response when I post to a web api
There was a meta question (to which Nick gave an answer to) about having moderators marking an answer which is an obvious solution to a question, as the accepted answer, see Questions with good answers but none accepted.


text:
Why is it posts are often never fully answered, even when you're trying your best to answer people's questions in the comments?
I mean, it seems like the people who you expect will see you through until you find the answer seem to simply abandon your issue altogether. My recent post on the Arduino site isn't making any progress whatsoever. I need help setting up my Arduino Uno with the port
The same exact thing happened with a Stack Overflow question I had a long time ago. Like, what happens first is they point out how incoherent my explanation is and when I finally elaborate, nobody says a peep. Is there anything I can do so this doesn't happen?

I will talk for myself: You have a Windows problem, not an Arduino problem.
I'm a volunteer. I'm here just for the fun, to learn from others and give a piece of advice when I can. I work in problems that looks interesting, demanding, challenging.
Solving Windows problems is the definition of unfunny.
I dropped Windows many years ago and switched to Linux. Best decision.

Linux is fantastic if you want to diagnose a hardware problem, write some scripts, do some programming - do anything you can imagine, basically. Windows is fantastic if you want to write a letter on behalf of your boss.

Questions about "why doesn't the serial port appear" are very specific to your setup. For me, for example, I don't have Windows 8 on any computer. I have Windows XP for legacy work and Windows 10 for more modern stuff. I also have OS/X and Ubuntu.
For a USB device to appear, it often needs a device driver installed. It's hard to even start to advise without having your operating system to hand (ie. Windows 8) so I (or others) can take screenshots.
There can be a similar response to questions like "I have the Arduino Micro and the Acme accelerometer, which works in the morning but not the afternoon". To answer that sort of question we have to be able to reproduce it. It's easier to answer programming questions, or hardware questions, because they can be more easily reproduced.

Questions of the style you have posted cannot be answered with a simple "This is your problem, here is the solution". It's a question of troubleshooting.
There are a number of logical steps that we have to walk you through trying and checking different things to rule them out - there's a million and one possible reasons for your specific problem. Only once we have actually identified and cured your problem, which can only really be done in comments or in chat, can we post an answer that has a chance of being tagged as correct.
Any answers that just consist of "Try this and get back to us" are really only comments and not answers and should (IMGO) be converted to comments anyway.

I have set up a community wiki FAQ question with troubleshooting steps:

My Arduino isn't showing up on my computer. What should I do?

Can people contribute to the CW answer in it and improve it? I'm not a windows user, so can't flesh out some of the more complex steps.


text:
Some tags that need fixing

ethernet-sheild: Misspelled. It should be renamed to ethernet-shield since there is no existing tag of that name.
intterupt: Misspelled. Should be deleted because there is already an interrupt tag and there are no questions using the intterupt tag.
edison: It was decided that all board names should be prepended by arduino-. There is no arduino-edison tag, so this should be renamed arduino-edison, similar to arduino-galileo.

You are drastically misrepresenting the linked question about board naming - in addition to the fact that nothing was "decided" the arguments there apply only to some of the boards which officially have Arduino as the leading part of their name.  But there is no such thing as an Arduino-Edison (or an arduino-esp8266 or an arduino-teensy-3.2, etc).  Since questions that aren't about Arduino are off-topic, there's no need to invent fake names to emphasize in the tag that an arduino approach is being used - if it isn't, the question gets closed as off topic

Chris, it's listed on the Arduino products page so in a sense it is associated with Arduino. However it is "certified" rather than being an Arduino product. The arguments listed in the link in the question about not prepending Arduino (eg. arduino-robot) would seem to apply here as well. Edison on its own has other meanings.

In case it's not obvious, I'm hoping to get other opinions. So far we have one for and one against. :)

Related: https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/is-an-esp8266-running-arduino-code-question-allowed

I only would suggest that the edison tag be consistent with galileo, however that is to be done. intel-edison would be another option. I really don't have a strong opinion on the topic. I actually didn't realize that, unlike the 101, those boards weren't really branded as Arduino even though they are Arduino certified. My original motivation for this post was to get the ethernet-sheild spelling fixed but I thought I might as well review all the tags while I was at it.

Personally I don't care either way what is done with the edison tag. It can be deleted for all I care, since the edison itself has been discontinued and only three people ever bought them anyway.

intel-edison is something that used to exist.  arduino-edison is not - the product was the Intel Edison for Arduino.

I'm happy with changing [tag:edison] to intel-edison and changing [tag:arduino-galileo] to intel-galileo.

I like the intel-edison and intel-galileo suggestion above.

I fixed the ethernet-sheild tag.
The intterupt tag will apparently be deleted at midnight as part of an automatic cleanup of tags which don't have any questions associated with them.

Can you please review the tag synonyms while you are adjusting the tags.
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=suggested&tab=newest
It's not easy to find the suggested tag synonyms - there is no review queue for it (that I know of). To get to it you have to go Tags > scroll to the bottom of the page > tag synonyms > suggested. Its not too obvious.


text:
Are “thank you” or similar notes allowed in questions and answers?
Are "thank you" or similar notes allowed in questions and answers?
I believe that they are frowned upon on some other engineering (stackexchange) forums.

Questions
Saying things like "Hi!" or "thanks in advance for answering" are frowned-upon, partly because they just clutter up the question. Also it's a bit cheeky in a question to thank people for an answer, it sounds like you are putting pressure on them to answer.
You will probably find some higher-reputation users removing such notes from questions, although I think if you are going to edit a question, you should be making more improvements than just removing "Thanks" from the end of it.
As Jeff Atwood noted there are better ways of thanking people for their answer like:

Voting up good answers
Accepting the best one
Helping the person who answered you by answering one of their questions if practical
"Pay it forward" by helpfully answering someone else's question

Answers
I'm not sure why you would put "thanks" in an answer. Who are you thanking? However again,  it just adds to the clutter to do it.
Comments
You are not supposed to make a comment to simply say "Thanks!". A more appropriate response is one of the ones above. The person answering will notice the reputation boost from voting up their answer, and certainly if you accept the answer it is clear who did the accepting.
However if you have something useful to say in a comment, then adding in a "thank you" won't do any harm. For example:

Thanks for that great answer. I found that if I increased the sampling rate it worked even better.

In that case you are contributing to the answer with your technical note, and slipping in a "thank you" at the same time.

Just wanted to check if such comments being removed, be an improvement for the site. If removing unnecessary texts that are frowned upon benefit the site?


text:
Community Promotion Ads - 2018
This site graduated last year, and so as we're rounding out to the end of our first month of the new year, we'll be starting Community Promotion Ads for this site!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
interesting stories and creations with Arduino that folks have published
helpful resources for folks wanting to work with Arduino
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

Very excited to have this! There are plenty of other projects (such as Fritzing) that would be great to promote! Can't wait to see what the community comes up with.

I wonder whether the main Arduino web site (arduino.cc) would be appropriate? It seems an obvious choice, even though their forum might be, in a sense, "competition".

@NickGammon in my opinion, most of the people here already would know about the Arduino website--there's not a big reason to promote it. The exception would be special things (like if they had an Arduino Day page, though I've never heard of a site running a community ad for a single week)

@AnonymousPenguin most of the people here already would know about the Arduino website Well, one hopes. :)

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting


text:
Attention: some of your recent flags have been declined - please review them before flagging this post!
Sometimes, when flagging an answer, this message appears:

Attention: some of your recent flags have been declined - please
  review them before flagging this post!

What I am supposed to do? I follow the link to the review, but I can't see any action, button, link or nothing.

What is the nature of your question? Which posts have been flagged, why were they flagged, or what do I do now?

@NickGammon - rather obviously, those are things the system should be directly showing.  The quoted uninformative message is a severe site design error.

There is no particular action to take. I got this message a while back when I was going through the review queues and flagging posts. If the (then) moderators didn't agree I would eventually accrue enough "flag declined" messages that the "system" (Stack Exchange) started automatically warning me.
I think the warnings eventually expire through time.
You might consider doing less flagging of things that should (could?) be handled by community moderation. That is, just vote an answer down if you don't like it. Or, if you don't want to take the reputation hit, post a comment explaining how the answer could be improved, or explain why you think it is wrong.
See my Meta post about not flagging answers as "low quality" just because they are a bit short or you think they are wrong.
Flagging as "not an answer" should be reserved for answers that are simply not answers. Like, gibberish, spam, not in English, or asking another question.
Even link-only answers are marginal, they are answers after all, just not good answers.

It's supposed to make you aware that you have been flagging incorrectly and that way teach you what is considered a good flag and what isn't.
There is no real actions to take on the website except to flag better.

But it keeps appearing, which looks like I haven't complete some action somewhere.

@LookAlterno nah it looks like it alerts you every time you flag (presumably until you are back to being a "good flagger"). On the mod interface you're marked NOT banned from flagging / Warned when flagging.

You can actually view a list of your flags and how they were handled if you would like to review. If you go to your user profile on the Activity tab, you can click on the XX Helpful Flags and you get a list of all of your flags.
I don't know exactly how the algorithm for warning works, as roughly 90% of your flags were deemed "helpful." If you're worried about it, look at your declined posts to look for a pattern (in your case there does seem to be a specific type of flag).
Also, when looking at your flag history, please note that Disputed is not Declined. Here's what it means: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95277/190823

How do I dispute a flag? Not interested in disputing a flag, I just want to know how this UI works.

@LookAlterno you can't. The name is confusing, but a flag is marked "disputed" when it's ambiguous how a moderation responded to it. This post explains it: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/95277/190823

I think all of this is oscure on purpose, to get you spend time here collecting bits of information here and there, like trying to reconstruct the rules of a game long time forgotten. Only the true believers will reach enlightment.


text:
How to ask a good question for Arduino Stack Exchange
How do I ask a good question about the Arduino?
We’d love to help you. To improve your chances of getting an answer, here are some tips:

Search and research
Have you thoroughly searched for an answer before asking your question? Sharing your research helps everyone. Tell us what you found and why it didn’t meet your needs. This demonstrates that you’ve taken the time to try to help yourself, it saves us from reiterating obvious answers, and above all, it helps you get a more specific and relevant answer!
If you ask something like how to connect neopixels to arduino and we know that Google has 77,000 hits for that question, we won't be very interested, unless you explain how your problem differs from the usual ones. Include a couple of links from pages that you have researched, to show that you have done some homework, and then describe your problem.

Be on topic
On topic:

Specific questions about Arduino boards, code, and the Arduino IDE. Feel free to ask about anything related to Arduino.
Questions about other IDEs, clones/counterfeits/derivatives, and other coding languages for Arduino. Feel free to ask about any language for coding Arduino.
Board recommendations. Make sure to include detailed information about the project you are doing and your requirements. If your question is too vague, it may be put on hold.
Library recommendations. Make sure to include detailed information about the requirements. If your question is too vague, it may be put on hold.
Code review: Use the tag project-critique for advice on how to improve your code/project.

Off topic:

General Coding: If your question is about coding not related to Arduino, try Stack Overflow

If the solution would be the same with or without Arduino, then it's usually a general coding question.

General Electronics: If your question is about making electronics or other electricity questions not related to Arduino, try Electrical Engineering.

If knowledge of Arduino would improve a question, it's on topic. Otherwise, it might not be a great fit for our site.

Make a meaningful title
Try to summarize your problem with a helpful and informative subject line. Helpful subjects draw in people who might know the answer. Unhelpful ones are likely to be skipped.
Examples of unhelpful subject lines:

Noob here, help needed
Help me, quickly!
Got error
Lost, help me
Problem with my circuit
No idea what I am doing

Good subject lines might be:

Problem interfacing 24LC256 EEPROM to Arduino Uno using I2C
LED flashes twice as quickly as expected
How can I work out how many Neopixels (WS2812 LEDs) are in a string?

Post in proper sentences
This is a forum you are using, not a mobile phone.
As a courtesy to the people you are hoping to have help you, type complete sentences. That is:

Start with a capital letter.
Spell words properly.
Finish with a period (full-stop). (Just the one, thanks!)
Break longer posts into paragraphs, and not have a "wall of text" hitting the reader.
Do not post in all caps. This is considered shouting and will annoy people reading your question.

Post your code, formatted correctly
Here is the "blink" sketch, copied and pasted into a post:

void setup() {
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
digitalWrite(13, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
digitalWrite(13, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000);              // wait for a second
}

Pretty hard to read, isn't it? Now just select all the code, and press Ctrl+K (think of the word "Kode"). That formats it nicely like this:
void setup() {
  pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(13, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);              // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(13, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);              // wait for a second
}

Basically all it has done is indent everything by 4 spaces.
You can force the syntax-colouring you see above by putting this before the code:
<!-- language: lang-c++ -->

Format your code in the IDE before posting
In the Arduino IDE (Integrated Development Environment) format your code by pressing Ctrl+T before posting it here. The auto-format indents code properly so you can see what code is under an if, for example.
Properly formatted code helps to work out logic errors, for example if you accidentally have an extra semicolon which shouldn't be there.
Do not post screen-shots or photos of your code
Do not take a screenshot of your code, or photograph it with your phone. Copy and paste the code as text and put it into your question as described above. A screenshot or photograph can't be copied and pasted into replies, nor can we copy and paste the code into the IDE and test it ourselves on your behalf.

Post a Minimal, Complete and Verifiable Example
To help us to reproduce the problem, post a Minimal, Complete and Verifiable Example that demonstrates the problem. This may not always be possible, but in many cases (for example, displaying numbers on a 7-segment LED display) it is very practical. This helps separate out the problem (not being able to display) from the non-problem (how you calculate those numbers).

Provide links to any libraries used
Many libraries have variants (for example, keypad libraries, SD card libraries, LCD display libraries). To help reproduce (and understand) your problem provide a link to the exact library you are using.

If the question mentions hardware, be specific
Don't just say "I have a temperature sensor connected to my Arduino".

Say which sensor (part number)
Give a link to the datasheet which describes the part or the board
Say where you got if from (eg. Adafruit, Sparkfun, eBay) with a link to the specific page where it appears
Say which Arduino (eg. Arduino Uno)

Include a photo of your set-up
If the issue sounds like a hardware issue, take a clear, in-focus picture of your hardware. The photo should clearly indicate which wires go where. Preferably use a different colour for each wire like in this picture:
[![Example photo of board][1]][1]

Include a schematic
Many projects involve extra hardware (switches, LEDs, motors, other parts). Draw or make a schematic showing how they are connected together. Do not use Fritzing which is not the same as a schematic and often difficult to read. You can get free software which draws schematics from Express PCB (you need the ExpressSCH program). This runs under Windows. You can also use Eagle although the learning curve may be greater with that. As a last resort sketch out your schematic with pencil and paper and scan or photograph it, and include that.
Example of ExpressSCH schematic:
[![Example schematic][2]][2]

Be clear what the question is
A good question states:

What you expected to happen; and
What actually happened

For example, "I expected the LED to flash every second" (the expectation) "but it doesn't flash / flashes every 5 seconds / is always on / is always off".

Avoid saying "it doesn't work". What doesn't work?
Distinguish between:

Compiler errors (that is, you can't even compile the program)
Uploading errors (it compiles, but doesn't upload to the board)
Run-time errors (it compiles and uploads, but does something you don't expect it to)

Tips for getting the most out of your post

Mention which Arduino you have. Is it a Uno? Leonardo? Due? Mini? Mega? The problem might be specific to a certain model.
Describe your problem in detail.
If it relates to an electronics part (chip or board), give the exact part number and preferably a link to the data sheet.
Describe how you have connected things like switches. Are they wired to ground? Or +5V? Are there pull-up or pull-down resistors? Post a circuit if there is doubt.
Post a complete sketch (program code)! If you don't you waste time while people ask you to do that. However, with coding problems, if possible post a Minimal, Complete and Verifiable Example that demonstrates the problem - not hundreds of lines of code. If the problem goes away in the minimal sketch, it wasn't where you thought it was.
Copy and paste code. Don't retype "from memory" on your mobile phone, in the train.
If you get an error, post the error (copy and paste). Not just "I got an error".
If you have debugging information in your sketch, post your debugging displays.
If you are using a library that does not come with the IDE (in other words, you downloaded it from somewhere) please post a link to this library.
Describe what you expected to happen, and what actually happened. Not just "it doesn't work".
If possible, describe what you are really trying to do, not what you think might work. For example "I am trying to turn on an aquarium heater and pump at the same time", not "how do I break out of an interrupt?".
Try to narrow down the problem, whether coding or electronic. Don't confuse us and yourself by trying to do everything at once. For example, if you are having problems reading a sensor, make up a simple test case, that tests that sensor (both electrically and in code).
Be nice - people are trying to help you here. If you are asked for more information, provide it calmly. Resist the urge to say something is "obviously" the case, or "I already mentioned that".

Don't cross-post!
Do not cross-post the same question on different Stack Exchange sites. See Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?. Work out which site is the best fit for your question (sometimes this can be a bit hard) and stick to one site.
You might consider:

Arduino Stack Exchange (here)
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange - if the question is largely about electronics, and not really about the Arduino
Stack Overflow - if the question is largely about programming in general, and the fact that the programming is on the Arduino is incidental to the question (for example, a question about C++ classes)
Raspberry Pi Stack Exchange - if the question is about the Raspberry Pi
Robotics Stack Exchange - if the question is more about robotics than the Arduino

If you have asked on another site (like the Arduino Forum) it is polite to mention that you have also asked there (post a link to the question). Some people here are members of Arduino Forum as well as Arduino Stack Exchange, and rather than helping you more if you post on both sites, may ignore both questions.

Don't double-post!
If you haven't got an answer in a couple of days, do not post the same question again. Regular users will soon spot that and flag your reposted question for deletion.
You can add a bounty to a question if you in a hurry for it to be answered. However you will need 50 reputation to do that.
Another thing you can do to help get a question answered is review your question. Have you followed the suggestions above? Maybe more details, links to parts, schematics, images, code, and so on, would help other people work out what the problem is, and post an answer.

Other resources

See Jon Skeet's post: Writing the perfect question As Jon says, imagine you are trying to answer your own question.

Once you’ve finished writing your question, read it through. Imagine you were coming to it fresh, with no context other than what’s on the screen. Does it make sense? Is it clear what’s being asked? Is it easy to read and understand?

Is it a homework question. That can be OK, so don't try to hide it (we can usually tell, when people say something like "my task is to do X").
If you admit it is homework we can still try to help you, but also try to help you to learn the underlying concepts. In other words, don't expect an answer that you just type up and hand in, but expect people to help you to help yourself with the issue.

If you aren't sure of some procedural issue (for example, you can't post a lot of images) you can ask on the Meta Arduino Site which is there for asking about how the site itself works.

Related
How to write a good answer for Arduino Stack Exchange
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/d43yx.png
[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/QWdzV.png

In the Post Your Code section, I suggest adding a note about the using the Auto format tool in the Arduino IDE before posting (Tools->Auto Format) (Ctrl-T)

@Craig Good idea! I've done that.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to write a good answer for Arduino Stack Exchange
How to write a good answer
Some new users on Stack Exchange may find the system of flagging, voting and commenting a bit difficult to follow, or frustrating, even.
This post is intended as a guide to writing a good answer.
A good answer

Will help the OP (Original Poster - the person who asked the question)
May be accepted by the OP, thus giving a +15 reputation bonus
May be up-voted by multiple people, each up-vote giving a +10 reputation bonus
May attract positive or helpful comments under the answer
Will help other people in the future (people with a similar question)
As your reputation increases your privileges on the site will increase

A bad answer

May attract down-votes, each down-vote deducting 2 reputation points from the person who made the answer
A lot of down-votes may cause the question to be automatically closed
May be flagged for moderator attention, possibly leading to its deletion
Too many negative flags (agreed to by the moderators) may lead to a temporary suspension of privileges
May attract negative comments

This is not a forum
Stack Exchange has a different model to most forums. On a forum (for example The Arduino Forum) answers are likely to build on previous answers, a bit like this:

Q. I've connected my LED to the Arduino output pin and earth, and set that pin to OUTPUT and HIGH. However the LED does not light up. Why is that?
John: You may have it in backwards.
Emma: You also need a current-limiting resistor.
James: Good idea! 220 ohms would be about right.
Olivia: Make sure you have the pin set to OUTPUT.
Ethan: See this web page
Sophia: What colour LED is it?

In a forum this is perfectly reasonable, and the overall answer is an amalgamation of each response. However here most of those answers would be down-voted or flagged as too short, "not an answer", or "link-only".
If you are used to forums, you may be aggrieved that a response that was perfectly acceptable on a forum gets down-votes, negative comments, or is possibly deleted entirely.
Answers should stand alone
Answers on Stack Exchange should stand on their own, and not rely upon snippets of information from other answers, or comments.
What you need to do is take the time to make a comprehensive reply that will not only help the OP today, but stand as a beacon of helpfulness for people in the next ten years! Something like this:

Example answer
LEDs are polarized, and thus have to be fitted the correct way around. If you have a LED tester or multimeter you can usually work it out by measuring the LED. There are some visual clues, however. If the leads haven't been cut the longer one is the positive lead (anode):

Also, the negative lead (cathode) will have a small notch cut out of the plastic (viewed from below) like this:

LEDs need to be protected from too much current. If you connect an LED directly across a battery or Arduino output pins, the high current through the LED will damage both the LED and the Arduino. You need to limit current, typically to around 20 mA. This is often done with a resistor in series, like this:

Note that the part of the LED symbol with the bar is the negative side (cathode). The 220 ohm resistor will limit the current to around 15 mA for a red LED.
You can visit a LED calculator site. Example of the calculations:

The forward voltage varies depending on the colour of the LED, and typical ones (from that site) are:

You can do the calculations yourself by considering that with a forward voltage drop of 2V for a red LED, then there must be a 3V drop over the resistor. Using Ohm's Law:
R = V / I
R = 3 / 0.015
R = 200

The closest standard value is 220 so we use 220 ohms here. Re-arranging the formula we can work out the exact current:
I = V / R
I = 3 / 220
I = 0.014

Thus this arrangement will actually draw 14 mA from the output pin which is in spec for an Arduino output pin.
Example code
const byte ledPin = 5;

void setup()
{
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
  digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
  delay(1000);
  digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
  delay(1000);
}

More information about using LEDs at Mike Cook's site: The care and feeding of LEDs

The example answer above illustrates:

Images of parts to make clear which terminal is which
A schematic of the connections
Example code
An explanation of why a certain resistor value was used
Some off-site references for more reading

Answers should not only contain links to other sites
Links can, and probably will, go "link dead" over time. Thus an answer of "see www.xyz.com" which may be helpful today will be useless when "xyz.com" becomes defunct. Preferably summarize, paraphrase, or re-state what the linked site says. Then include the link, if necessary, as "further information". Of course, don't claim the other person's work as your own, so you could say something like "As John Smith says at xyz.com, blah blah blah ...".

Comments on answers
Please feel free to comment on someone's answer if you think something is unclear, or wrong. If you see an obvious typo, and you have enough reputation to do so, you can edit the answer to fix up the problem. However do not change the original intent of the answer.

Make another answer
If you see an answer that you believe isn't the greatest, or there is a better way of doing things, then feel free to post a different answer that explains the situation better. Stack Exchange is designed for this to happen, so that the best answer gets the most votes and "floats" to the top of the answer pool.

If you like an answer, vote for it!
If you see a good answer, vote it up. This helps others (like the OP) know that other people agree with the answer. It also helps the person making the answer get more reputation.

Answers are NOT for:

Asking another question - start your own question for that.
A "me too!" answer - that is, saying you have the same problem as in the question, and asking if anyone solved it.
To ask for more information about the question - use a comment for that if you have enough reputation. If not, answer some other questions until you have built up enough reputation to make comments (currently 50 reputation).
For the OP to add additional information, like schematics, code, photos, explanations. Edit the question to do that.
To comment on another answer - use a comment under the answer to do that.

References

How do I write a good answer?
What should I do when someone answers my question?
Privileges
Reputation

Related
How to ask a good Arduino question

This is a relatively poor example, in particular, the proposed answer is highly inappropriate.  A "question" such as "My LED doesn't light up." is not only too broad, it is not even a question,  and probably not even on topic here.  Such a posting either gets closed, or comments are used to request clarification.  Jumping right in and responding to that non-question with a full treatise on LEDs is not appropriate.  Frankly the comments you use as a negative example are closer to being appropriate initial responses to the non-question - yes, even the color one (given forward voltages).

What's unique about Stack Exchange is that it is not only not a discussion forum, it is not a textbook or tutorial site either.  Questions must be specific, and while answers may go beyond the question, they need to be a specific response to an actual question which has been asked, not a general response triggered by someone expressing non-specific interest in an area of technology.

You make some valid points, but I think the problem here is that the question was a bit vague. I can reword the question to be more of the sort of question that deserves a lengthy answer. I see quite a few answers along the lines of "go look that up on the Internet" which frankly I don't think helps anyone. I wasn't using the "what colour is it?" as a negative example, but as an example of the sort of things you expect on a forum.

Take a look at It’s OK to Ask and Answer Your Own Questions. There Jeff Atwood makes it clear that it is OK to use Stack Exchange to provide some sort of tutorial (even if you have to make up your own question so you can answer it). Arguably, if I ask a question and then answer it, it isn't a genuine question because I already know the answer.


text:
How "on hold" works?
This question have been put on hold (the question itself is not relevant here).
What is the mechanism behind the on-hold lock?
As I understand, any user with the "protect questions" privilege can put question on hold, but certain number of votes by unprivileged users can achieve the same result.
How many votes are needed? What are the fine details of voting for close? Do votes expire?

"on hold" is really just "closed" but renamed to encourage users to edit and improve the question to get it reopened again.
After a while the "on hold" tag gets replaced by "closed"

Any normal user can vote to put a question on hold (I think there may be a rep threshold but can't remember off-hand).  I think it takes 6 votes from normal users for a question to go on hold - or just a single vote from a moderator can do it.
Votes don't expire, but they can be retracted by the casting user - at the cost of not being able to then vote again on that question.
Once a question is on hold it can be voted to be reopened - again I think the same thresholds and quantities apply (and a moderator can reopen it instantly).
After a while, an on-hold question will be closed automatically (again, not sure of the time involved here), and a closed question with no answers will be deleted (after another timeout period I believe).
"protected questions" are another matter entirely. A question can be "protected" so no more answers can be posted unless you have enough rep. That prevents any "me too" answers.  It's not something that is used often, especially around here.

See Help Center > Privileges > Cast close and reopen votes
It's the result of "close" votes being cast.

It takes 5 close votes to reach the closing threshold ...
Close votes age away harmlessly if the threshold is not reach after a number of days. ...
Once a question has been closed, it will no longer accept new answers and the words [on hold] will be appended to the title. After 5 days, if the question remains closed, the word [closed] will instead be appended to the title.

So "on hold" really means "this is going to be marked closed soon, unless you can convince people to re-open it". However it is still actually closed.

... any user with the "protect questions" privilege can put question on hold ...

No, that's different. I've protected a couple of questions which were intended as reference questions, when people were starting to "answer" with their own problems.
Right now, users with 500+ rep will have the "cast close and reopen votes" privilege, which is what is needed for voting to close.

Moderators can also lock questions and answers, like this rather amusing one in order to prevent people altering it.

"If the question has at least 100 views, close votes will age away after 4 days; otherwise close votes will age away after 14 days. " It seems like the same parameters are used across  all Stack Exchange sites.


text:
Declined spam flag
I raised a spam flag on an answer, that doesn't answer the question, but it's tying to sell a product.

I now realized that the product in question is mentioned in another answer and the author of the flagged answer is the maker if it, trying to reply to OP's comment, inquiring about the product.
The proper flag should probably have been just a NAA, but the mod should have still deleted it as a non-answer.
I assume there was a mistake by a mod, because the message refers to the Gerben's comment linking to the product.

Should I have just flagged this post as NAA or is this post still considered spam?

That was my mistake. When I saw the flag I thought it was a flag on the comment, not the answer below. Due to the way the page appeared on my monitor I only saw the comment which mentioned where the product could be bought, and assumed that was what the flag was for.
You are quite right that the answer in question made no attempt to answer the (original) question, so I'll deal with that. :)
(The answer was answering a comment under a question, however I don't think that Crossroads realizes that answers are supposed to answer the main question, not auxilliary questions raised in comments).

Should I have just flagged this post as NAA or is this post still considered spam?

I don't think the post is spam, since the author of the post was trying to help someone find a board, mentioned in my answer, so this is hardly spam. You are right, though, to flag as not an answer.


text:
What does "bumped to the homepage" mean?
I frequently see this, on older questions. Where do they end up?  If I add anything to them, is the OP likely to see it?
EDIT - okay, so it ends up at the top page in that 'forum' area, looking like an active question, but is not really.

See also: What can cause a question to be bumped?

It will be bumped by "Community" which means an automated process. It is intended to bring questions with zero-score answers only back to the attention of everyone for further investigation. This does not apply to questions with negative scores.
See What can cause a question to be bumped?

is the OP likely to see it?

Possibly not. I've seen quite old questions bumped, and the OP may have moved on. They will probably get an email notification however. Still, questions here are not just for the OP, and if you can give a good answer it may help someone else in the future.

Thank you Nick.

The flaw in this is that, without an answer having accepted by the OP (who may have abandoned it), the question is assumed to be unsolved. These questions seem to go on getting bumped back to the top every so often, forever.

You can always up-vote the answer(s) if it/they appears to be a good attempt to answer the question. In particular, if the OP doesn't say "that didn't work" you might default to assuming it worked.


text:
Lack of Arduino StackExchange logo?
This is more than likely an obvious question but I would still like to confirm my suspicion or perhaps I'm completely wrong and there could be something I'm ignorant about the processes behind StackExchange operations.
Cut to the chase, why isn't a logo or banner for this website? I know we're out of the beta stage but every SE branch out there that is not a beta has their own website (okay, I might have some confirmation bias but you know what I mean, right?). Is it due to the fact of possible copyright infringement if had their logo or pictures of their products on this website? I'm assuming that this place is an unofficial Arduino supported website so perhaps that could explain the lack of branding for this website. The main reason why I ask is to fulfill my own curiosity. I'm not suggesting a call for action or anything.
I mean, even Raspberry Pi SE has something for their website and they don't have the company logo for what I presume the same reason.

[dsp.se] was the last site that got its design, and it was on October 2016. Since then, there's no new site design, and since site logo is one of site design elements...

A relevant post (on this meta) by one of our designers from earlier this week: Custom Arduino Community design and logo - Information gathering :)

It takes times for a theme to be developed, there is a intermediate stage where the beta skin is still used (without actual beta branding) while the graphics designers get around to taking it out of the backlog.

To add to Ratchet Freak's answer the Stack Exchange team wait until a site goes live (from Beta) before they even start on working out a logo and theme. And there is a backlog, quite a considerable one, I believe.
Looking on the bright side, the limits for privileges are not increased until the theme is developed. Compare us to Electronics Stack Exchange privileges for example.
So in many ways, it is in everyone's interests to have them take their time. You get access to somewhat higher moderation tools at a lower reputation level.

Just to back up what has already been said; Ethereum is an example of another site that has graduated from Beta who is also waiting on a logo.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Add all board types to the Arduino Stack Exchange site as tags
I often have questions about the MKR GSM 1400 which I post on the Arduino Stack Exchange site. But unfortunately the closest tag for this is the MKR1000. Which is pretty similar, but not the same at all. The MKR1000 fetches data over Wi-Fi whereas the MKR1400 has a built in SIM module. So I wanted to ask if would be possible to add all the different Arduino products as tags to that Stack Exchange site?
The board types can be found here: https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Products

Privilege "create tags" is awarded at: 150 reputation.
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

Do you have enough reputation?

I added the mkr-gsm-1400 tag. You can assign it to your questions now.

Juraj's answer has explained about the "create tags" privilege and created mkr-gsm-1400 tag.
But to answer your question,

would [it] be possible to add all the different Arduino products as tags to that Stack Exchange site?

Not really, tags can be only be created when there are questions to assign. The Stack Exchange system doesn't allow anyone to create tags for non-existent questions, and those unassigned tags will be considered as "orphaned" and will be cleaned up daily.
Also, tags that have exactly one question are automatically pruned after six months, unless it has tag wiki.
That said, please consider to also complete the tag excerpt and tag wiki for this tag to save this tag!


text:
Is a question involving TinkerCAD (real-time Arduino circuit simulator) off-topic?
TinkerCAD's forum is very limited on how to ask questions (with only pictures). And it looks like questions are replied to weeks later (i.e., low traffic).
I have a pretty simple question about using a slide switch in online simulation and IDE. What do you think?

Really the fact that it's an online simulation is irrelevant. The issue in question was with your code, and it would be the same on a real Arduino (lack of pullup / pulldown resistor on the input, or no INPUT_PULLUP set).
In this situation the question is not really about TinkerCAD - it's about your code or circuit.
However if there was something that worked on a real Arduino but not on TinkerCAD, you'd certainly be better asking about it at TinkerCAD.

Should I delete my answer? It's at -1 still.


text:
Trouble with posting code correctly
Why is it that the code I have posted appears jumbled up but looks normal when inserted between brackets?

You need at least 4 spaces (not tabs!) to precede every single line. Additional spaces will indent those lines. https://arduino.stackexchange.com/editing-help#code

"enter code here" is where I pasted my original code and it was fine. In subsequent edits (re-pasting) has left a mess. Before saving the edit, the code looks fine whilst scrolling but appears below very jumbled and when saved shows as jumbled. Must spaces be added manually to each line of code?

Select all the code and then hit Ctrl+K (think of K as in Kode). (Ctrl+C has already been used for "Copy"). That puts 4 spaces before each line. If you do it a second time it takes the 4 spaces away.

Thanks for all the help, I very much appreciate it! :)

Format your code in the Arduino IDE (or in whatever code-entry editor you are using). In the Arduino IDE, it's the 'Tools | Autoformat' menu item.
Copy/paste your code into Arduino Stack Exchange's question or answer text-entry box. (If you're trying to show code in a comment, forget about formatting. Comment boxes strip all the indenting and newlines out of it. The best you can do in a comment is enclose it in back-ticks: `` to give it a gray background).
Select the entire block of code and click the '{}' symbol in the text-entry box's header. That will indent your code so the site will recognize it as code and keep its formatting.

Sorry for my noob issues, I have it now!

No problem - I know this from having tried do by hand, what the site could do for me.


text:
63k rep user answered, then downvoted, then closed question
I don't post much here because I stopped fooling around with Arduino about the time this SE was getting off the ground, so I posted my first question today.  And a user with lots of rep answered it, then an hour later made a snarky comment (but obviously obvious), and at some point unilaterally closed the question (aka "put on hold"), presumably because he received a downvote from someone, possibly thinking it was from me (making this retaliation).
Not sure how things work here on this SE, but that sounds like shenanigans in general, as well as on other SEs.
Interestingly (randomly?), the 4th suggested question was a congratulations to the user to reach a milestone reputation.
It's obvious from his terse messages/comments/replies that he doesn't like to explain himself, making a point to be as succinct as possible, even to the detriment of communication.
Is there something actually wrong with this question, are shenanigans afoot, or is something else going on here?  There were several other similar types questions offered in the suggested questions dialog as I wrote the question, and it should be relatively easy for proponents of this new feature to enumerate some of the benefits of it.

There is something actually wrong with the question. It's garnering opinions, asking, effectively, "what is your opinion on this thing? What's the point of it?". If you can't see the point if it, then the point is not relevant to you - so why do you care?

Questions that ask for opinions are not welcome on the site - hence the closure.  I often answer a question and then close it, because even questions that don't belong on the site deserve an answer sometimes.

the suggested questions are generated on base of your question. and you mentioned reputation

The top 3 results for a search of "benefit" are the same kind of question that I asked.  FYI, if y'all are gonna be like Stack Overflow, I'm not going to hang around.  I don't hang out over there because it's obvious they hate questions.  This is approaching the SO gordian knot of "Look at our top voted questions to understand what kinds of questions are appropriate here" && "Highly voted questions are not an indicator of valid questions [because we've changed what questions are valid over time]".

Back to the topic of this question: your brevity and circular logic aren't explaining what you're trying to say.  Obviously, if I don't immediately appreciate the apparent value of something, I probably don't understand it's utility.  That's why I'm asking people who do know why this thing is useful.  Otherwise, if it was so trivially easy to appreciate the utikity of something, I could ask Siri/Cortana/Alexa/Jeeves.

Yes, we hate questions. We don't hate problems though. Bring us your problems and we will try to solve them - that is what we are here for. What the SO sites are not are general discussion forums.

If you had a need for the CLI you would immediately know the benefits of the CLI. Since you don't immediately know the benefits of the CLI you obviously have no need for the CLI, and knowing the benefits would be of no interest to you since you have no need for those benefits.

The CLI is a niche facility. It is only of interest to the people who populate that niche, and those people, by virtue of being in that niche, already know the benefits.

The problem with your overgeneralization is that it applies to all features and all questions, thereby cascading the entire reason for a Q&A site out of existence, preempting not only Q&A sites or forums, but communication as a whole.

Majenko is elected moderator. I repeat - elected. Users of Arduino SE trust him. The reputation points are well-earned with his extensive knowledge of Arduino, microcontrollers and electronics. So your accusations are wrong. Perhaps he should not put your question on hold, but it is not shenanigans.

So, what you're saying is that someone(s) elected him king and now he can do no wrong?  Must have been a tough election with a thorough background check.  Sounds more like you're describing a saint than a moderator.  Or did a watery tart give him a sword?

there were pro-term moderators until the Arduino SE was Beta 4 years or so. then the first community moderators were elected. Nick Gammon and Majenko. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135360/theres-an-election-going-on-whats-happening-and-how-does-it-work

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/election

I did say right from the start not to elect me and that I would be a terrible moderator. I'd be like Cartman with a badge...

@YetAnotherRandomUser Can I suggest that you stop arguing discussing that the question shouldn't be put on hold and instead spend that energy in improving the question so that it can be reopened.
As the question currently stands, I stand behind Majenko's decision to put it on hold. Having said that I think it is close to being acceptable and just needs a bit of editing to get it there.
I personally found Majenko's answer very helpful, particularly the first example, as I have a project coming up involving an Arduino and Raspberry Pi. By extension, I find the question helpful - so there is potential.
Here are some guides:

Help Center > Asking
What types of questions should I avoid asking?
Good Subjective, Bad Subjective
How to ask a good question for Arduino Stack Exchange

Interestingly (randomly?), the 4th suggested question was a congratulations to the user to reach a milestone reputation.

That post is over two years old. I was congratulating Majenko for reaching a high-reputation milestone.
I can't explain how that particular question got related to yours, there doesn't seem to be any connection.

So, what you're saying is that someone(s) elected him king and now he can do no wrong?

There are processes in place for dealing with rogue moderators, however I think that in this particular case there is nothing particularly insulting or unfriendly in Majenko's response.
All users, particularly moderators, are expected to abide by the Stack Exchange Code of Conduct.
Moderators must abide by additional restrictions to their behaviour.

To be honest, I've had questions in other parts of Stack Exchange closed by moderators, to my annoyance. :) So, it can happen to anyone (I'm a moderator here).
The more vague the question is, the more likely it is to be closed, as a general rule.

"I can't explain how that particular question got related to yours, there doesn't seem to be any connection." This title has "64k rep" and the other has "20k+ rep"

Is the suggested question here on Meta, or on the original post? Wherever it is, I can't see it now.

is here at top-right now as Linked, because it is linked in Question

It's here now because the OP posted a link to it. That doesn't answer or explain why the question about the 20k rep was the "4th suggested question".

yes, now it is linked, as I write in the comment. I created an answer with a picture

to solve the mystery about suggested questions.
if you type in the title of the question and start to write the body, SE evaluates the title to find similar questions. in 190 questions on Meta, "63k rep" is very similar to "20k+ rep"

I'm sorry, but I just can't help myself...

... so sue me...

Hahahaha that's awesome


text:
Declined moderator flag
While another similar question was recently asked here on Arduino meta, I have a slightly different issue of declined flags, so I am starting a new question.
I reviewed a first post, in this case the only flagging option available was "moderator attention needed" instead of the usual list.  Since this was the only option, I flagged and got the following decline:

Of course, having reviewed a large number of posts I am familiar with the standard flag options.
Can anyone explain why the usual set of flag options were not available?  Perhaps, by the time I reviewed the post it had already received so many downvotes that this is an automatic feature on Arduino SE?

I have no idea why it was only showing one option. It should have had "Spam - Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation." as the first option in the list.  Choosing this option automatically (after something like 6 flags) deletes the question.
Maybe you were too late and it was already flagged enough times as spam and was actually deleted already.  Spam disappears almost immediately it arrives on these sites. In general, by the time you see it, it's already gone. If it hasn't, then the option of flagging as spam should be there.
If it isn't there, then I would guess you don't need to flag it - you're too late to make any difference.
Note: We don't usually need to delete spam. The system does it for us. By telling us manually about spam by flagging it for our attention (even though it may have not given you any other options?) it's just causing us more work that we don't need.
If you have a problem with how the system itself works then you should raise a question on meta.stackexchange.com as we here have no control over (nor much knowledge of) how the system works internally. We just moderate.

I don't yet have enough rep yet to close / vote to close posts, therefore I have not seen much of that part of the SE.  This particular "question" was in the review queue, so not that old.  It's good to have the explanation about spam.

@MichaelT "Maybe you were too late and it was already flagged enough times as spam and was actually deleted already." I believe this is the reason. Deleted posts only show a sole "mod flag". So if you encounter this, consider refreshing the page to check the post status.

There is a "smoke detector" bot which informs subscribed users when it thinks it detects a spam post. They don't have to be moderators. Enough users who react to such messages are likely to cause the spam to be flagged, and then deleted, almost immediately.


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2018 Winter Bash Leaderboard
For all those interested in the Winter Bash hats, there is a leaderboard for hats earned on just the Arduino Stack Exchange website.
https://winterbash2018.stackexchange.com/leaderboard/arduino.stackexchange.com
A list of hats is available here:
https://winterbash2018.stackexchange.com/
And to round it all off, here is a link to where Arduino SE ranks compared to other SE sites:
https://winterbash2018.stackexchange.com/leaderboard
Winterbash2018 discussions:
Winter Bash 2018 Hat list
Show off your hats! (2018 edition)
Winter Bash 2018 Knitting Yes, you can do some knitting too!
I would like to hear what hats you think are easiest to achieve!!

post a question that gets answered or earn reputation with an answer you post


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Request to create the arduino-create tag
I've never requested a new tag before.
I have a question about the Arduino Create site but there's no tag for it yet.
It would be great if a tag like arduino-create or create could be made for questions about the site and how to use it.

done............


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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Arduino breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  3          8
Users destroyed                                  72          0
Users deleted                                     7          0
Users contacted                                   7          0
User suspensions lifted early                     1          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue            36      1,491
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue                0      1,003
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue          8      2,175
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue                0        874
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue                 0      4,185
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue                0      6,622
Tags merged                                       1          0
Revisions redacted                                1          0
Questions unprotected                             0          1
Questions reopened                               16         26
Questions protected                               1         35
Questions migrated                               37          0
Questions merged                                  5          0
Questions flagged⁴                                6        719
Questions closed                                511      1,488
Question flags handled⁴                         142        583
Posts unlocked                                    0         11
Posts undeleted                                   4         70
Posts locked                                      3        169
Posts deleted⁵                                  594      2,640
Posts bumped                                      0      5,281
Comments undeleted                                1          0
Comments flagged                                  0        597
Comments deleted⁶                             1,192      2,116
Comment flags handled                           175        422
Answers flagged                                   2      2,130
Answer flags handled                          1,582        550
All comments on a post moved to chat             32          0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Arduino without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

One may ask: "Why do we even need moderators?". Well, the answer is simple: people need someone to complain to.  Without someone to complain to they will just explode, and that would get messy.


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Arduino at the movies
I was watching a rather cheesy disaster movie this evening (a terrible film - Collision Earth - very formulaic, I could write the script blindfold) and spotted an Arduino (well, some red Arduino Uno clone, probably R2 looking at the location of the reset button) in one of the props.  It forms, supposedly, part of the communication system of a space ship...

Does anyone else know of any instances of an Arduino or an Arduino Clone being used as a prop in a movie?

Oh, and while kind of on the subject, I recognise this PCB from somewhere. It's from the same film, but I know the PCB. They're normally in a rack of loads of them (in the film they are, too, but backwards). I swear I've seen it before somewhere from some teardown maybe.  Anyone have any hints?

The 2nd image looks like telco equipment.

Yeah, I was wondering about a POTS line card, but it doesn't have the right connectors. From what I see it's only got a card edge connector, and all the POTS equipment comes in rectangular racks.

Yes, I just immediately saw the multiple small transformers without big caps and other power-supply components and imagine they are for telecom transmission, plus the card looks like standard telco interface cards (http://www.msln.net/guides/images/equipment/westell.jpg) with the exception that the card-edge is on the "bottom" rather than the "back", taking the LEDs as being on the "front".

It might be that they are reminding me of the cards in a data IO programmer (https://youtu.be/9MIzbTpdt80) purely from the shape.

Someone on Electronics SE might recognize the second board. I don't, personally.

They may. I don't want to disturb them with my inane ramblings though. The question of what that board is is rather unimportant - just curious. The main question is, has anyone else spotted an Arduino in a film?

I decided I should start a fandom wiki on the topic of PCBs in bad films.  https://movie-circuits.fandom.com/

It somewhat reminds me of those shutterstock images of "people doing electronics" as in https://imgur.com/gallery/OQndy
Picture Nr. 4 also has an Arduino in it. Or the replica/fake bombs used to add extra game elements to airsoft matches. As in https://www.hackster.io/draymond/prop-bomb-for-paintball-airsoft-8ea257

Not an Arduino, but quite humorous anyway...
This is from Christmas Icetastrophe, another really bad disaster flick (yes, I am a fan of really really bad movies - they are so hilarious).
This is supposed to be a "detector" that can "find a hot meteorite" that landed on earth.

Except it's plainly the board out of a router. A cable variant of whatever router, since the DSL interface isn't populated.  The closest I have come to it is that it's a D-Link router.  A Mediatek MIPS chip in the middle, with a DRAM chip below it, and the WiFi interface under the shield.
Oh, and a few LEDs stuck through a bit of plastic wired to the battery pack in the bottom left.
Hilarious!

Funnily enough, I was going to post this as a question myself, but didn't know where to do so...
In Silicon Valley S02E03, Gilforth is reading the Arduino Projects book and has an Uno and a shield on it. At the risk of sneaking in a question within an answer, what shield is it?

Looks like some LCD shield of some form.

I thought that, maybe a 1602? But without the buttons on the ROBOT shield.

Probably, yes. It is probably white on blue as well.


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Community Promotion Ads — 2019
2019 is here! And with the new year, as usual, comes a new iteration of Community Promotion Ads! Let’s refresh these for the coming year :)
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
Why do we have Community Promotion Ads?
This is a method for the community to control what gets promoted to visitors on the site. For example, you might promote the following things:

the site's twitter account
interesting stories and creations with Arduino that folks have published
helpful resources for folks wanting to work with Arduino
cool events or conferences
anything else your community would genuinely be interested in

The goal is for future visitors to find out about the stuff your community deems important. This also serves as a way to promote information and resources that are relevant to your own community's interests, both for those already in the community and those yet to join.
Why do we reset the ads every year?
Some services will maintain usefulness over the years, while other things will wane to allow for new faces to show up. Resetting the ads every year helps accommodate this, and allows old ads that have served their purpose to be cycled out for fresher ads for newer things. This helps keep the material in the ads relevant to not just the subject matter of the community, but to the current status of the community. We reset the ads once a year, every December.
The community promotion ads have no restrictions against reposting an ad from a previous cycle. If a particular service or ad is very valuable to the community and will continue to be so, it is a good idea to repost it. It may be helpful to give it a new face in the process, so as to prevent the imagery of the ad from getting stale after a year of exposure.
How does it work?
The answers you post to this question must conform to the following rules, or they will be ignored.

All answers should be in the exact form of:
[![Tagline to show on mouseover][1]][2]

   [1]: http://image-url
   [2]: http://clickthrough-url

Please do not add anything else to the body of the post. If you want to discuss something, do it in the comments.
The question must always be tagged with the magic community-ads tag. In addition to enabling the functionality of the advertisements, this tag also pre-fills the answer form with the above required form.

Image requirements

The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.
Must be hosted through our standard image uploader (imgur)
Must be GIF or PNG
No animated GIFs
Absolute limit on file size of 150 KB
If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.

Score Threshold
There is a minimum score threshold an answer must meet (currently 6) before it will be shown on the main site.
You can check out the ads that have met the threshold with basic click stats here.

When does this need to be done by - Or is this dynamic throughout the year based on the most votes?

The latter, @sa_leinad: this has no "due date."

Apparently this was our ad a few moons ago.

What's the point of an ad on arduino for arduino?

This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting


text:
Community Promotion ad on Raspberry Pi SE
Greetings which I hope make it past the remove greetings bot ;)   Yes, this is much the same post as the one I just put up at IoT.SE Meta, almost.
I added the Arduino.SE community promotion ad used in years past at https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/ to the new (2019) selection page there; they must be renewed annually.
That one is totally fine, but if anyone thinks they have a better one, post it here and I will replace it (rather than having competing ads for the same site).  Be sure you understand the requirements for the image first, they are in the question on the RPi Meta page linked above.
Also, if you are a voting member at RPi.SE, please upvote the ad, since they must reach a threshold in order to appear. The specific "answer" is here.

The Arduino promotion ad should be posted on the Arduino Meta page - not the Raspberry Pi page. https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2561/19409

No.  What's the point of promoting a site on its own page?  There's already a banner at the top.  Anyway, it is totally normative practice to do both (promote the local exchange as well as related ones).  In fact, it's totally normal to promote non-SE sites if enough people vote the ad as appropriate.  E.g., Rpi has usually had a link to the foundation's github page, on U&L you'll find community ads for various linux distros, etc.  The SO version is even explicitly about ads for open source software: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/379273/open-source-advertising-1h-2019

Thanks for the clarification.


text:
6 downvotes in 6 days - what am I doing wrong?
I've recently joined Arduino.SE but am a 7K+ reputation member of both SO and U&L.
Every community has its different mores, and I'm guessing that I've not yet grokked this one's.
My reputation page shows -12 reputation over the last 6 days on both questions and answers.
Can someone explain what I may be missing? Or have I just had a bad run of luck?

I have the same going on (with 11 downvotes), see https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2665/11-downvotes-in-a-few-weeks-what-am-i-doing-wrong    .... I think someone is picking on you.

Bad luck, mainly.  Answers that don't quite pertain to the question, questions that you answer yourself where the question has been asked before, or questions that aren't on topic (note: we have questions on Arduino hardware and other systems that use the Arduino API. Generic microcontroller hardware questions, even if they are for a microcontroller that happens to be used on an Arduino, are not really our sphere).
We are a fairly narrow site. For more general questions on electronics and microcontrollers the Electrical Engineering SE is usually a better fit.

Hmm, the thing is that I never asked a "generic microcontroller question". All the questions / answers pertained to Leonardo's chip.

Could you elaborate on the answer(s) which don't quite pertain to the question?

There is one where the OP asks where on his hard drive some files are. You point him to Github. While the files are available there, that's not what the OP asked. Maybe he wants to modify the files on his hard drive or something. So people see that answer as wrong, since it's not answering the question asked.

As for the chip one, you're asking about the chip and the datasheet. That's more generic than about the Leonardo. That's microcontroller. That's EE, not Arduino. If the question had been about the Leonardo as a whole then that's fine. Personally I have nothing against that kind of question.

However, the simple answer to any question like that (which is probably why it got closed / downvoted) is "From the manufacturer of the chip".

The datasheet also describes registers which (correct me if I'm wrong) would fall under Arduino.  I'm glad to learn the manufacturer is now Microchip, which was non-obvious given how generic the result is when googling ATmega.

This site doesn't tend to up or down-vote much which therefore skews the votes you do get. As an example, I got 77 votes for an answer on Cooking Stack Exchange where I basically posted a photo of a kitchen strainer which took me a couple of minutes to take. On the other hand, I've spent hours on posts which only got a handful of votes. For example this one about interrupts which only got 11 upvotes (maybe I didn't spend hours on that particular one, but I still get a very low upvote rate).
I had down-votes when I initially joined this site, and now I am a moderator. I suggest you ignore the implied criticism and just do your best to post interesting questions, and also interesting answers and let your work speak for itself.
To a certain extent people will downvote a question if it looks like you haven't tried all that hard to research before posting, or if there is a similar question already with an answer. I'm not saying this applies in your case, but that tends to be what happens.

Thanks Nick. I purposefully risk some down votes out of laziness sometimes, eg answering with a GitHub link when someone asks for where they can find some code on their HDD, rather than writing a separate question and answer for X in what may be an XY problem.

@TomHale, add the link as comment, not an answer

@Juraj Yes, but you aren't supposed to "answer" in comments, even with a link. The correct approach is to make a proper answer that stands on its own. Links can go down, so putting a link in an answer, or a comment, doesn't really help if that happens.

11 upvotes that's 15 now, does your meta post now qualify as click bait?