text:
Questions with good answers but none accepted
Many times questions get answered and answered well, but for whatever reason (lack of intelligence, age, language, understanding of how the site works, etc), an answer never gets accepted as the correct answer.
This seems to be a common problem on this site, mainly I think because of the clientèle that we have to deal with (blood from a stone springs to mind...) and that's making the whole site suffer IMHO.
So I am wondering if there is a way that we, as a community, could flag an answer as high quality (kind of the opposite of the low quality flag). With enough flags the answer can then be accepted by the community instead of by the OP (whom we never hear from ever again).
I'm thinking:

Can only be done on answers with > +(10?) votes
Can only be done if there is no accepted answer
Can only be done on questions older than (7?) days
Requires (5?) flags
You cannot flag your own post, but you can agree to your own post being flagged in the flag queue (so someone else has to have flagged it first)
You can only flag if you have enough rep (not my place to decide the level ;) )

Addendum:
Since the comments below have enlightened me to how the "not answered" is decided, another idea occurs to me - something that might possibly be implementable by the devs.
From time to time you come across a truly awesome answer that has no (or maybe one) vote. An answer that someone (* cough * nick * cough *) has obviously spent a lot of time and energy writing.  The kind of answer where you think "That's an answer and a half. It deserves more than just one vote".
I would gladly give up some of my own reputation to give that kind of answer 5 votes.

As far as the addendum goes, you can sort of do this via bounties. The minimum spend is 50, and it doesn't actually impact the actual vote count. However I think awarded bounty is factored into how the answer is ranked on the page, and the rep goes straight to the user.

Yeah, bounty is more about "This question needs a good answer writing for it" as opposed to "This answer is stunning and is under-voted. I love it more than chocolate."

Except, you can award a bounty as a "you are awesome" gesture. I have seen it done on several occasions on other sites, I'm currently skimming through Meta to see if there are wait time requirements in these situations, or if you can just instantly award.

@JakeC But not on an answer - only on a question. And it's not the questions that want more votes but the answers. It's not about giving Nick more rep, it's about getting the right answers to get enough votes.

Thanks for the kind remarks, Majenko, however I noticed practically all of your answers are lengthy and well-written as well. In fact when I come across an answer with lots of detail, diagrams, schematics, maths, etc. it is usually no surprise to find your name at the bottom of it.

The frustrating thing is, I have an short answer on English Language SE about "crossing the road" or "crossing a road" which got me 21 up-votes. That's almost as much as my highest answer here, which took me hours to write. You seem to get heaps more rep on other sites, even for short answers, whereas long ones (including mine, Majenkos and others) are lucky to get a single vote.

Related: http://meta.arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/1270/

Interesting idea, but I thought things were worse than that. :)
I've noticed quite a few answers (including some of my own, heh) which do not get a single up-vote, let alone being accepted by the asker.
At least with an up-vote, the system (I think) considers the question answered (maybe with a couple of up-votes, I'm not sure). (Not accepted, but at least answered, so it drops off the "unanswered" list).
If people (like you and me) are not even up-voting each others' answers, I don't know where 5 positive flags are going to come from.
My suggestion at this point is, that those of us who post regularly take a look at answers (by others) and up-vote them if they look OK.
This will have the side-effect of boosting site reputation for everyone, so that more people can participate in voting to close doubtful questions, etc.

Yeah, this is a problem, and we're all (me especially) guilty of it :) I see you doing your part though, and I'm trying to do mine ;) I think a big part of the problem is that people come here having used the Arduino forum or other forums and expect it to be the same format - discussion - which it isn't. As a result they don't know about up-voting and accepting answers. Maybe we need a big-ass banner at the top of the screen "Don't forget to up-vote answers you agree with and accept the best answer for your questions."

I've made a boilerplate: Was the answer helpful? If so, please accept it by clicking on the "tick" icon next to the answer, and also possibly upvote it. This indicates to other users that you found the answer useful, and it also stops Stack Exchange from periodically "bumping" your question in the hope of getting an accepted answer. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation!

That is nicely written. Mind if I steal it? Maybe a boiler-plate commenting system would be good to have in the site - select from a list of pre-defined comments to leave people.

You are welcome to it. Having a bit of boilerplate makes you more likely to use it than just sigh and move on. I've got mine on my Leonardo boilerplate-generator. :)

Nice. I just installed QuickNote for Firefox - give me a notepad at the side of the browser window - great for copy-and-paste boilerplate :)

Of course, I am using my own home-built keyboard (made from an old Amiga A500 and a suitable chipKIT board - who uses Arduino these days? ;) ) so I guess I could program it into there actually...

I have a couple more, eg: Please edit your post and format the code using the code formatting markdown (four leading spaces). For help see Markdown help. You should be able to do this by selecting the code and pressing Ctrl+K to have your browser do this for you.

This is currently where most of my participation lies. The amount of time I have to devote to answers is limited, but I still try and review questions that have unaccepted answers and ensure that the best answer has at least one vote.

Much appreciated, it is, too.

I have added another idea that occurred to me to my question...

I don't think upvoting is practical. There are right answers and brilliant answers. If both are upvoted, upvoting lost its value.

I'm not suggesting upvoting all the answers. However if you find a question that has no answers with upvotes, then consider upvoting the best answer. If the OP disappears without accepting or voting, then it devolves to us to help others know which answer is a good one.

I just want to echo what Nick Gammon has said and just explain my methodology for improving this. The system only considers a question as unanswered if it has no answers with a score greater than 0. There are a lot of questions out there with good answers, just none of them have been up-voted. So when I get a chance I go through and vote on answers that need
So my personal process for this is when I first open the site I scroll down through the Active list and look for questions bumped by the "Community" user. Per these answers on meta, these are exactly the questions that need attention, and one is bumped every hour. I spend a few minutes and look through the top few of them and vote where appropriate.
It's a thankless job, as there is no karma received for voting (although there are badges, I think), and it doesn't do much to address the general lack of engagement by the majority of the users here, but I does help the overall quality of the site in the long run.

This is all good stuff. I have been using these sites for years, and even I didn't know how that side of things worked.  I now have a new task in a morning :)  It's just a shame I can't up-vote my own answers ;)

I have added another idea that occurred to me to my question...

There are no direct benefits from up-voting other answers (or questions) but the indirect effect is that the site benefits. For example, if a good answer has a few up-votes, then visitors are more likely to believe them, and thus the reputation of the site as a whole will improve in the wider community.

I don't think the SE team would implement this. There has been various talk about this before (formal and informal), and the consensus is to leave accepting for users (especially ones who can't yet vote), and for everyone else to upvote.
For a question to be considered unanswered, it must have no upvoted or accepted answers.

Perhaps, could users with a very high reputation be awarded the privilege to mark answers as the accepted answer?
I believe this would improve the quality of this site.

Call for action:
Go for the Vox populi batch and the civic duty batch.
Note if you go for the "vox populi" batch do not star questions as you will not be able to get your 40 votes.
I hope someone noticed some upvotes today.
Tomorrow I try again for the "vox populi"
There seems to be a suffrage badge for 30 votes as well :-)


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Is "Have you Googled it?" an appropriate response?
I have seen many comments and answers by members here to the effect of "have you tried Googling it". Sometimes it is meant genuinely, but sometimes I get a condescending or snarky vibe from it. Is this really appropriate for this community?

I am going to post my own thoughts here but I am interested to hear what others have to say as well.
Per Betteridge, my answer is no.
Up until very recently my feelings toward this issue were somewhat ambivalent. I don't think telling someone to google something is particularly productive, but at the same time I think people really should be using Google as a first step. However, I recently gained a different perspective on this after reading a comment from Joel Spolsky (Stack Overflow co-founder and CEO) about how one key contributors to successfully building a community was "using Google as the front page".
So looking at this from a community building perspective, the goal is not whether or not the question has been answered on the internet in general, but whether or not Arduino.SE has provided an answer. If you can google for an issue and Arduino.SE isn't one of the top results for that issue, it means you have identified a gap in the knowledge base here. Try to answer the question as best you can (and perhaps even canonically if the circumstance allows) and suggest improvements to the question as needed so that the question and answer together becomes something that is googleable.
For example, the most recent example of this is this answer here. (Please note this is not meant to be an attack on the person who provided it, in fact I think this person is a great contributor to this community, I just need a reference to illustrate a point.) In this answer, the asker is being directed to another site, a site that (in my opinion) has a terrible user experience (poor layout, content spread across several pages, etc.) that has very little chance of being a good resource for future visitors. We need to be building meaningful content on this site, not sending people to other sites.

The reply by Jake C is very interesting. Perhaps the user came here because of Google. I think a milder response is usually in order. Something along the lines of:

So you want to make your ATtiny85 have a USB interface? I found quite a few pages about this when doing a search, such as this one.

That is hinting that using Google may help (if the user hadn't already) but is not particularly condescending.

I like that example in general, however, it does seem to drift toward a link only answer...

You might want to add a note to your answer that this should be a comment, not an answer (cc @JakeC).

I think in all cases where Google helps provide an answer, the at least the gist of that answer should be rewritten in the post so that it actually brings something. Also links may come and go and in one year, a link-only answer may just become irrelevant!

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Could some "Achievements" have negative impact?
I was looking at the achievements and I noticed that some might actually have a negative impact on the value of this SE website.

Vox Populi/Civic Duty (Use the maximum 40 votes in a day/ Vote 300 or more times)

May cause people to spam votes in order to get the achievement.

Cleanup (First rollback)

I'm not even sure on how to cause this, but I don't believe it's a good thing. Nor should we make people try to get a rollback (for the achievement) I believe.

Disciplined (Delete own post with score 3 or higher)

This is never a good thing?

Peer pressure (Delete own post with score -3 or lower)

This requires you to have a -3 post to begin with, so one could, purely for the achievement, attempt to get a -3 post?
It's all a bit theoretical but, the effect isn't easily spotted, so could be bigger than sensed.
(p.s. I found that all SE sites have these achievements, is this meta still the right spot to post this? Or should this be on general Stack Exchange meta?)

This is a good question, however, I think this would be better suited on the general SE meta, as it is a SE wide query. I have flagged it for migration.

See Which meta am I supposed to post on? - it is fine to post here, and the SE team do read these posts. However if you (Paul) want me to I can migrate it.

Peer pressure - I haven't felt motivated to try to earn that badge. ;)

I was going to make a comment as it was going to be a bit long.
This is more of a general SE meta topic seems all sites have these achievements available.
Also badges don't equate to privileges which are earned by making meaningful contribution to each SE site.
So if there are people who want to go around sites asking stupid questions or spamming unimportant questions or answers just to earn a badge they will probably be the ones who have a low rep keeping them away from established user privileges.
There is also a good side to the achievements as it gives the incentive to other users to participate in the site and feel like they have been commended for that involvement. For example

Vox Populi/Civic Duty (Use the maximum 40 votes in a day/ Vote 300 or more times)

This to me would make people want to show others that there are useful questions or answers on the site and cause that user to participate in site activities.
The one for giving someone a badge for a question with -3 votes I would think would be aimed at new users and others here and there so as to keep the site uncluttered from nonsense questions, thus another incentive to users or newbies to help keep the sites running smoothly.

I agree that it's good when there will be more votes cast (I kinda have the feeling Arduino.SE has way less voting as on other SE's) but it shouldn't be because of an achievement. Your point of them not getting extra's, is very good though! You don't gain a lot, nor does the site loose a lot of value.
Which isn't for the: "Delete a 3+ question", when I saw it, I thought: "Hey, I could just delete one of my old questions.", which would be against the principle of StackExchange.

My initial thought was, that more badges would equal "a better image" of my account. Though, having good questions in your "history" might be better than that extra badge ;)

@Paul the disciplined badge is quite odd, but only one person has it on Arduino.SE and 51 on EE.SE, and most are high rep users so they are not going to be spamming just to get badges. Stack exchange obviously saw the use of having such a badge, they have their view and many could have a different reason why that badge would be awarded.

Nice! Actual stats! I was scared that it might be an unnoticed issue. But 1 one whole Arduino.SE is not very worrying. The badge is odd indeed. But does not seem to lead to worrying behaviour :)

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


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A rash of minor edits
This is not a question (really), but recently I have seen a rash of 10-20 suggested edits, more or less each day, over the past few weeks or so, where the only change was to remove the "Thanks". Now, don't get me wrong, the "Thanks" shouldn't be there, there is a post on SE Meta about it, and I'll add the link if I have time to find it later. I, myself, have also just made edits where the removal of the "Thanks" was the only edit, but that is because the rest of the post was impeccable.
However, the "Thanks" was not, in 90% of these recent cases, the only thing wrong, and the images without description, spelling mistakes, bad grammar, poorly formatted lists and code formatting had been left as they were and were not corrected.
Initially I had clicked upon "Improve Edit", thus giving the previous editor the +2 rep. However, today I have been rejecting all of them, apart from one, as it just seems that lazy editing should not be rewarded.
I have some screen shots as example, but I do not wish to publicly name and shame, and so I will also not name the editor in question - it was the same person in each and every case.
So, I guess that there is a question after all... am I right, or just being a grumpy s*d?

I had paused the review of these edits for a moment or two, and by the time that I came back, I noticed that the remaining 4 or 5 had been approved anyway, again with just the "Thanks" having been removed, leaving behind glaring spelling, grammar and capitalisation mistakes, as well as one of the images not even displaying correctly (the markup was missing the preceeding "!" - note the text "TFT Front Image"). Here is a screenshot of the top of the post:

I do not want to sound like a nitpicker, but could we all try to be a bit more diligent in both edits and approvals, as awarding +2 points for lazy edits will only encourage more sloppy editing.
Addendum
I may be kidding myself here, but I like to think that if people see that their post has been fully edited, that they understand why, take those edits onboard and, hopefully, in their future posts, they then can craft a better, more stylistic (and hopefully easier to read) question or answer (without the "Thanks", typos, spelling mistakes, lack of capitalisation, omission of image descriptions, poor list formatting, question titles written in title case, lack of of code formatting (including the use of the <--language: C --> tag), bad grammar and what have you), or maybe, I have just been working in the field of documentation for too long...

Can you provide a link to this question you took a screenshot of?

@AnonymousPenguin - Arduino Mega 2560 - TFT 3.5 Display is not working with libraries suggested

@Greenonline Here is the link that you are referring to in your post from EE.SE Meta that does not reject removing 'Thanks'. The previous edits could have been a bit sloppy to remove that tail. Question to mods still remains that, would such edits be frowned upon? Is there a separate "edit" guideline for this branch of SE apart from EE.SE?

@Greenonline Another one from meta.SE

@Greenonline another example of a mod removing "unnecessary tail". Please be generous to people cleaning up. Really appreciated!

@Avamander Don't understand how this new edit (8 mins ago) to this post helps?

@ChetanBhargava It is fairly common on SE to remove usernames from examples. It also avoids creating any negative association.

@Avamander I got it, so the OP should have redacted the information in first place? Unfortunately OP is the one harping all about editing and missed the key about editing :-)

There's a rejection reason called "no improvement whatsoever" that applies here. That edit didn't do anything to make the question easier to read or understand, and goodness knows it could've used some of that.
Some folks get all bent out of shape about "thanks" at the end of questions, but I've yet to hear an argument for a simple "thanks" making a question objectively worse; it's at the bottom of the post, it's one word, it doesn't really chew up space and may even make the post seem a bit less demanding. It's not like you're posting a full-on signature that pushes the answers down the page and requires time for readers to parse; it's one word in closing, one superfluous word among many.
And yes... "Thanks" is mostly superfluous and if you're in there editing for other reasons it's probably worth getting rid of... But removing "thanks" while leaving a dozen embarrassing language and formatting errors is kinda just insulting to everyone else who has to read the post, not to mention the author whose post is modified without any appreciable improvement.
These are nuisance edits; please do reject them.

I didn't respond when I first saw this because I wasn't (and still am not) sure. It appears there is nothing wrong with removing these "thanks!" lines, so don't worry about that part.
I asked other moderators, and it seems that all accepted edits award +2 rep, so a "simple" edit does not "steal" rep from a more complex edit.
I must admit there have been times when I edited egregious problems out, without checking for more subtle ones, for example:

Subject in all caps
"Arduino" misspelt as "Ardruino" or similar
Code not formatted
Rambling extra sentences like "hello", "thanks", "goodbye" and "it's urgent!"

However if you have time I think it helps to look more deeply and see if you can spot other things. For one thing, new posts by new users enter the review queue. If you just remove something simple like "Thanks" then that post leaves the review queue, and other problems might be missed. If you don't have time to check in more detail, perhaps postpone editing until you do have.

The bottom line is, the site looks better if we have good questions and good answers. Anything our more experienced users can do to help both of those causes will help improve the reputation of the site as a whole, thereby encouraging more people to visit it.

I agree with you that site looks better without the clutter. This site is still flooded with thanks, TIA, etc.


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How to fix this warning?
I have been getting this warning below:

Some of my previous edits were rejected by a biased user (or a "nitpicker" / "grumpy s*d" as proclaimed) that I wish not to name.
I have provided enough evidence and links on this meta site why the edits I did, were fair.
How can I get rid of this warning that is not rightful?
Also in what circumstances the user should reject the edits (and added his edits) instead of using "improve edits" button/option?

The "Reject and Edit" button should be (and most likely is) used if the suggested edit leaves a lot of work not done.

@Avamander what if a reviewer rejects this edit and claims +2 by changing a few bits over what one has changed (and rejected by him)? I can provide examples if you need.

People who can "Reject and Edit" doubtfully care about the +2 rep. But it'd be nice if someone else chimed in too.

I would also like to invite comments from user(s) who cowardly down-voted this post - it wasn't me, I only just spotted it. However a downvote on Meta doesn't mean it is a bad question. It means that they disagree with the proposal.

@NickGammon In theory, "agree/disagree" voting on Meta questions is intended to be restricted to feature-requests.

@Air - ach, looks like I am wrong! It is hard to keep track of all these conventions at times. Well, the question might have been voted down for referring to a fellow site user as a rather ignorant frog then.

@Nick Well, in practice, I expect many or most users don't follow that guideline anyway, so you'd be right!

@NickGammon I know that it wasn't you as you had been very upfront in our communications. +1

First, read my answer here.
Then start making edits that actually make the posts you're editing better: easier to read, easier to understand or easier to find. Treat every edit you make as though you were editing your own work - if you're submitting a post that would embarrass you if it had your name on it, then don't submit it until it wouldn't.
Because, once edited, it does have your name on it - and if it is lacking, then you'll be held accountable, along with whoever dares to approve your edits.
Do this, and you won't have to worry about warnings.

This issue seems to be getting a bit out of hand. See Should I remove 'fluff' when editing questions?
A couple of quotes from that page:

Yes, absolutely remove such things.
Anything that is not relevant to the question/post is noise and should be removed.
That includes salutations, signatures, 'thanks' and the kind of content you have highlighted.

However:

Should these sort of edits be made if this is the only change?

I would not recommend making these changes as the only changes in a suggested edit (as the OP's rep would require.) If you have full editing privileges, that's different.

After talking to other moderators just now the thinking seems to be that removing "Thanks!" and nothing else is a rather trivial change. It would be different if you found spelling and grammar mistakes and fixed those as well.
By making tiny edits you are forcing other people to go through these edits and approve them, which is wasting their time if the edit is trivial, and if they still have to make more substantial edits of their own to get the question into proper order.

While I was typing this Shog9 responded. He is one of the Community Managers at Stack Exchange (a level up from a moderator). I would listen to his advice. :)


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Why does the migrate dialog only list Arduino Meta?

This question is probably due to my lack of understanding of the inner workings of the review queue code, and the procedures associated with it. This question also may not be SE Arduino specific, in which case I would be happy for it to be migrated to SE Meta.

If you are reviewing Close Votes, and think that a question is off-topic and should be migrated, you click on Close, and are presented with:

Then click on "off-topic because...", and you are presented with:

Then clicking on "...belongs to another site...", gives you:

Why is only Meta listed? Should there not be either a list of other sites (i.e. SO, Programming, EE, ...) or a picker or a text box?
There can't be many cases where questions need to be migrated to Meta. I have seen one or two, but there are more off-topics that could be moved to regular SE sites.
In such a case, is the only recourse, for suggesting a migration, to click the flag link (which is not available in the review stage, but only in the regular view)?

My question arose, when reviewing a question with seemed to have very little, if anything to do with Arduino, and it was in the Close Votes review queue. After having thoroughly read the answers to When should an Arduino programming question be moved to Stack Overflow? I now see, especially as Nick's answer has given the question more of an Arduino context, that it should actually remain on SE Arduino, as it will, indeed be helpful for others.

I think it is because we are "only" a Beta site. Once we graduate, I think more migrating options become available.
As a moderator, I can migrate to other sites, and have done in some cases. I usually ask their moderators first, and quite often they decline to accept them. However migration does happen.
I think there is some rule that Beta sites don't get to migrate to other sites. I'm not quite sure why such a rule exists (it would seem more logical for it to be the other way).

Even on SO, the community can only migrate to meta, superuser, tex, dba, and stats. I believe the SE team is the ones who enable very common migration paths.

I have just found the same question asked on SE Robotics Meta: Closing a question - only option for another site is Robotics Meta


text:
Seeking help versus outsourcing labour for free
Sometimes users ask questions that basically shift the research and development work of a particular project or product into the hands of the community.
This problem is somewhat related to not being specific enough, but bears another issue: acquiring free labour from the community without giving something in return.
It's a problem that isn't new, not even on StackExchange.
But I recognised it on Arduino SE too.
It goes without saying that SE is a platform where people get to ask questions.
Oftentimes without knowing in advance what is involved in finding an answer.
We all sometimes need a pointer to a solution or can make great use of someone else's experience.
But some questions have a certain smell that the poster would rather have others magically come up with a production-ready solution to their complex design ideas – and implement them too.
How should we deal with questions that basically just ask for free engineering work?

+1 - There was one blatant question that caught my eye recently, I forget if it was on SE Arduino, Pi or Robotics, that asked for some code to be written for the OP and then to be emailed to them (they provided an email address!). I flagged it and it has, fortunately, been removed. Another one, that comes to mind was a question that tried to get a software team together that could deliver a project. That question went the way of the first... :-)

Is this an example of a "outsourcing labour for free" question? http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/22660/integrating-arduino-program-with-java

You might have mentioned getting help with homework, and college assignments too. :)
On the face of it, this site is designed to answer specific questions, and when it is used like that, I see no problem if the question is being used by an engineer in some company, a high-school kid, or someone doing a thesis. Of course, this is in addition to hobbyists, and others who simply want to learn.
However overly-broad questions, like "I have an assignment to monitor heart rate - please provide the code for me ... oh, and a schematic" can simply be voted-to-close as too broad. This is asking for work to be done, not to have a question answered.
If there is doubt, asking for them to clarify what they have already tried can soon wiggle out people who are serious, from those trying to avoid work. For example:

What have you tried already? However see this: “What have you tried” epidemic. So don't post a comment "What you you tried?" on its own. It isn't helpful.
Where did you get stuck?
Please post your current code, even if it doesn't work
Please post your schematic
Please post links to your (proposed) hardware

We are not really supposed to answer shopping questions, or about which device is "best" to buy. These are too subjective.
Without being too snaky about it, we can also see what research they have already done. Sometimes I say "I see Google returns 100,000 results on a search for Arduino +yourIdea - in what way did those hits not help your project?".

While I agree with this answer in general, it's the too-broad vs. work-to-be-done difference in particular that I'm contemplating about. A question asking for free labour really isn't necessarily too broad (and vive versa). Voting to close is a way to deal with the problem, but a rather subjective one as long as there aren't any tangible criteria. In the end I feel that the too-broad reason would be used inflationary – and the underlying issue still wouldn't be addressed.

I think the simple answer is that we don't provide "free labour" - we answer questions. Thus "asking" for code to be written from scratch isn't a question that has a reasonable answer. However asking why a certain function doesn't turn on an LED is a reasonable question.


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Unable to see all the tags in the next tag badge
Maybe this is not the right place to ask this kind of question (sorry i this is the case).
I'd like to know why in my Activity User Page, under the section Reputation, Next tag badge, if I click on Choose which bag to tack I can not see all my top tag. In other words, as you can see the three screens look different. I don't know if this is a bug anyway, why this is happening? What I'm missing?

Screen 1:

Screen 2:

Screen 3:

One is showing all tags, one is showing recommended tags, one is showing top tags. Can you state more clearly which of those you think is wrong and why? Screen 1 shows 8 tags (one with a zero next to it), screen 3 shows 6 tags which are your higher scoring ones.

@NickGammon I think that Screen 2 should report also sound, pulse and arduino-pro-mini. Am I wrong? It looks like the system is not keeping the count of the score for those three tag.

On my "choose tags" display there is a scroll bar on the right. I can't tell from your screenshot whether you have one (and didn't notice it) or not.

@NickGammon there isn't any scroll bar. This is way I'm asking, I tried also to use the search tool for the particular tags that are missing, but with no more results than the three displayed in the Screen2.

I think you are confusing Tags and Badges. Screens 1 and 3 are for Tags, screen 2 says "Search for a badge".

@NickGammon, maybe I was asking the question in a not understating way. Anyway, the answer of Oded explain what I was asking. Thanks for you help.

A bunch of those tags are not eligible for becoming tag badges yet - a tag must appear on a minimum of 100 questions to be considered for tag badges.
The tag badges you cannot track are those that are not eligible to tag badges.

Thanks for your explanation.


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Extra tag that would be great if were included
I have recently posted about using a 2-Wire speaker with Arduino Esplora, however I couldn't tag it correctly because there was no arduino-esplora tag. The Esplora tag would be very useful in case anyone posts about an Arduino Esplora, and anyone looking to answer questions about the Arduino Esplora. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

It seems that an "Arduino-esplora" and "Esplora" tag have been made today. I believe that completes your question. You should accept @NickGammon's answer since it's also right (and the question is resolved).

A tag should be created (from scratch) if you use it. It doesn't have to exist in advance.

It doesn't have to exist in advance. You need 150 rep for that, though. The OP only has 28.


text:
It's a shame that we can't "ping" users who have had their questions migrated - do they still get notifications?
I was going through the Close Votes queue, and after having spent a fair while trying to get my head around this question, Problems coding a 12 pin 7 segment display and grove temperature sensor with Arduino Uno, and then trying to answer it to the best of my ability, given the limited information in the actual question, I have just seen that the user is not even active on SE Arduino. Hence any requests for clarification will, probably, fall on "deaf ears". Looking at the revison/migration history, I would not be surprised if the relatively new user thought that their question had be deleted/discarded/ignored/forgotten, and will not bother to revisit, or chase down, their question. I wonder if there is a question, on SE Meta, relating to new users and their possible confusion about migration?
I suppose that it is my own fault for spending so much time on it, when I should have checked the question's antecedence first.
However, it did make me wonder why we can't "ping" users in order to give them a nudge/poke, to see whether they are still interested in an answer. I guess that they may get a notification in their email, assuming that they have this setting enabled. However, in the case of migrated questions, on to sites where they are not members, do they get email notifications in such a circumstance? SE Meta is not totally clear:

Migrated question of non-existing user - says that users are not notified
Are users notified when their question is migrated to a site they're not a member of? - says that they are - as this question is chronologically later, then I assume that it is safe to assume that users do receive notification.
Remind new users to create/associate accounts if a question has been migrated to a site on which the user does not have an account - it is not clear if this feature request was ever fulfilled, but it looks like a good idea.

It is a shame really, as a number of people seem to be willing to help this person, and many others in similar circumstances, but if they are unaware that people are adding comments and answers, would they bother hunting down their question on to a different site to which their originally asked it?

As a follow up, I've actually left a comment on one of the user's SO questions, where they appear to be active, mentioning that the question has a few answers...

I think that a question still "belongs" to the user even if it is migrated, as there is an over-arching Stack Exchange account, of which the accounts on individual sites are "children". Are you sure s/he didn't get any pings from your comments?

I am not 100% sure. It appears that they do, please see my updated question. Maybe my update, has turned my question into a non-question, or in other words, has ended up answering itself. I am still not convinced though. I guess the only way to be sure, would be to ask K-Dawg, the OP of the original question, whether they received any notifications or not.

At the risk of facing a harrasment law suit, these are the comments that I have left for the user.

OK, very good. :)


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How to earn the Vox Populi badge,
The Vox Populi badge is described as :"Use the maximum 40 votes in a day".
However I tried to get this one a couple of times now and I never got to more than 31 votes. Then I get the message "You have used all your votes for today".
It looks like a bug to me or there should be a requirement to have "XX question votes up/down votes" or a rep of ZZ to get to 40 votes?
As to the "usefulness of the badge"
Well ... how useful are the badges anyway :-s.
I see a benefit in "appreciating other peoples effort" by upvoting answers and questions (and somehow in downvoting as well). After all this is a questions and answers site and not a discussion forum.
For those willing to give it a try. It is quite some work to find 40 questions/answers worthy to upvote in a day.

You need to only vote 40 questions (not answers) within one UTC day.

Och ok. Thanks for the clarification. With the current quality of questions this badge is not an option for me.

Downvotes count as part of the 40.

40 Downvotes is not an option for me.

You have 30 votes per day. This is the limit.
And in addition to that, you get an extra 10 votes on questions. Read this blog post to find out why.

You can vote 30 times per UTC day. You get an additional 10 votes on questions only.

I stumbled accross this little detail at the down votes privilege help page. So if you can only vote 31 times, try if you still can vote on questions.

Thanks for the answer.
I won't go through the trouble of testing and then see it is undone again :-(

Just don't vote on a single user more than 2-3 times. You can go through the hottest questions for instance and vote on posts you like with at least 25% votes on questions.

I should warn you that if you up-vote too many answers in a day (particularly made by the one person) the system thinks you are vote-rigging and reverses the votes. I don't know the limit, but I suggest that you don't just find a single user you like and up-vote 40 of their answers. Or even two users.

how useful are the badges anyway ...

I think they are just to encourage you to do things you might not otherwise bother with, like editing questions or answers to make them better.

Also see What are the limits on how I can cast, change, and retract votes?

Just out of interest, I got -170 rep yesterday for the reason "Serial voting was reversed". :)

That was probably a result of my actions :-(
I thin I'll just forget about stack exchange. We are not compatible.

No real harm done. I'm just back to where I started two days ago. As for the Vox Populi badge, it sounds like one of the harder ones to get because of all the voting rules. They are designed to stop voting abuse, but can be frustrating for genuine users.

I spend a couple of days reading questions and answers to vote for good ones (not only your answers but based on author because it is easy and because some authors just give better answers).
It seems that stackexchange does not appreciated my effort and reversed my work. So I'm not happy.


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Ok guys, I'm new to this level of review, how does re-open work?
This question is very vague, and they've provided a little more info, but really not enough. I'd like to encourage the user to get in and provide more info.
But if I click re-open, is my ONE re-open vote enough to re-open it? If i'm part of a concensus, then I'd gladly give it a go and if others thought so too then maybe he get's another shot. But on the face of it, it's not really there yet, and would only offer to re-open if others felt that "you know what, let's give the guy an extra chance."
I am new to this level and will "go with the flow". I DO WISH SE sites were more forgiving on vague questions as I know I've had my fare share over the years, but...
tldr;
What is the best course of action in this?

That question, to which you refer, is actually really interesting, although badly worded and somewhat broad.

No, it takes five close votes and five reopen votes to put a question on hold and reopen a question, respectability. If you think it should be reopened, then vote accordingly. If no one else agrees, no harm done. If others agree, your job is done.
If you're really not sure, it's best to skip it and leave the review to someone else.

cool, I had no idea if it was 5 to reopen or not (I knew it needed 5 to close). I did skip it at any rate :)

I'm not surprised the question was closed:

hi guys How can I serial monitor repport send the atmega328 and save in chip? thanks.

That's incredibly vague. In fact, it doesn't make sense.
OK, he edited it, but the damage was done. A lot of people didn't understand it, and voted to close it. Not one of them was a moderator, even. So it took 5 close votes to close it. Now he need to improve it enough to get 5 reopen votes.
You are, of course, welcome to cast one of those 5 votes.

It is a very poorly worded question, if it even rates as a question at all. it's a shame, I'm a massive fan of SE, but more a lurker as my rep shows. These are the sort of questions I wish stack could help users with (well, not this vague, but) given the right push these questions  can pave the way to greater learning. Anyway, it's where it should be :) I didn't cast an open vote, not unless they were really going to try and have a go, but my question was more about the process. I didnt know about the 5 votes to reopen. Thanks again guys

We are trying to help, but we have to understand the question. :)

Yeah, it's all good. I understood that too. It was probably a very poorly chosen example on my part. It's a discussion I'd like to take elsewhere, but in essence, sometimes I do wish SE was more "how can I achieve this solution" as opposed to the strict Q&A style that it is. I know it's not. and I'm not debating the issue here and now. Cheers Nick! :)

@Madivad - personally I agree with you. I have had a few questions closed as not being on topic, when all I was trying to do was get a solution to my problem. We are trying to not be too pedantic here (on Arduino SE) as we know we get a lot of beginners here.


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Congratulations to Majenko on reaching 20k+ rep!
Our Arduino Stack Exchange site is humming along nicely, and it is appropriate here to congratulate Majenko for being the first to reach 20k rep.
Well done.

@majenko  : also has over 42K reputation on Electrical Engineering (EE SE). The Electrical Engineering knowledge allows his answers here to have broader and more complete answers.  Congratulations Majenko, and thank you for the contributions.

@Marla , note that Majenko hasn't asked any questions on Arduino.SE. Bet because he knows everything already ;D

Oh, I don't know everything, but I do know everything can be found in the datasheet ;)

He's already on his way to 40K :-) ... he's a great guy, he helped me a lot so far in my journey into the Arduino.

Thanks guys :)
I'm just happy to spread knowledge around. Knowledge is worthless if it's hoarded :P

very wise words

Well, you've hoarded quite some knowledge before spreading it ;D Which is quiet useful, because otherwise you'll spread "half-knowledge"?

And now, congratulations on getting 30k rep!

XD :) 8D ;} B[ :P


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The spam! The spam!
I understand that the spam this site receives daily is currently handled by users flagging it and that works and it's great. But I can't help but feel that there should be some automated way of handling what one can clearly tell is spam by just the title alone.
What I would like to see (pie-in-the-sky) is some mechanism for detecting obvious spam and slowing down its submission to the site and then having it hidden from the main page after a short time or even deleted entirely. Whether it is keyword-based or uses a Bayesian filter or whatnot would be decided by whoever decides to implement it.
Of course there is the caveat that machine detection isn't perfect, and that there will probably be an "arms race" between spammers and the detection system, but I do feel that it is possible to make spamming expensive enough while not unduly affecting legitimate users of the site.

It's already a work-in-progress. Stack Exchange is using a bot called SmokeDetector (affectionately known as Smokey) which goes through some fairly complex rules to detect spam. You can visit it here:
http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq
It currently merely detects, and (if requested) sends a message to anyone who subscribes. Subscribed members can then flag the spam for moderator attention, or moderators can delete it immediately.
It does get things wrong from time to time, so that is why it doesn't automatically delete spam. For example, on the English Language part of SE recently, someone asked about expletives (eg. f--k) which were picked up by Smokey as as "offensive text detected in body of post". However in this case it was a legitimate post enquiring about whether certain expletives were appropriate in writing a novel.
Of course, there are other posts using words like that which are just for dating-site spam.
Training Smokey is an ongoing effort by a fairly dedicated team of coders. :)
Probably the closest you could get to automating things would be for a number of users, who are frequently logged on, to subscribe to the notifications. Then they could quickly flag as spam such posts.

As I write this, I got a couple of notifications from Smokey. One was an hour ago and one 55 minutes ago (I was eating dinner at the time). In that time the community had already flagged it, and it was automatically deleted due to the number of flags. So the current system works reasonably well.

Shortly afterwards I got a notification from Smokey. After only 22 seconds, a post had two downvotes. After 1 minute it had 4 downvotes. I had to hurry to delete it before the system got to it first. :)

IMPORTANT
Don't downvote spam: flag it as spam - that activates the Stack Exchange automated system.

This certainly covers the "detection" part, but I'd still like to have a mechanism in place for obstructing submission. Maybe a "Are you sure?" page or two with the confirm button in different places using multiple submission techniques (to further hamper automated submission) would be useful.

Im sure you're aware of this, but I have to note that a spam flag carries an automatic downvote.

It also must be noted that smokedetector is a community project run by members of the community - stackexchange itself currently has no hand in running it.

The spammers are well aware of Bayesian filters by now, which is why a lot of spam contains complete nonsense, with a link to the spam in the middle. The nonsense (although looking like English) is supposed to give it a positive Bayesian score. Plus there are other techniques they can use which I won't list (I don't want to give them ideas!). These can be hard for automated systems to detect but easy for humans.

Maybe a "Are you sure?" page - or a Captcha. However there are quite a few people (including me) that find Captcha's incredibly annoying. Plus they don't seem to slow spammers down all that much.

You're not going to expect too many users with 102+ reputation to be spammers, so you could probably let them slide without presenting a captcha.

Arduino indeed gets more spam than usual lately: it is currently the 5th most-spammed site on the SE network, according to Metasmoke data. However, it still gets only about 1/3 of what Drupal site gets, and Drupal has been dealing with this plague for several years by now. There isn't an end in sight.
Automatic blocks are in place. Tim Post points out that the amount of spam blocked is of orders of magnitude more than we see on the sites. Roughly speaking: users flag about 100 spam posts per day, while SE blocks about 10000 spam attempts per day.
The most recent proposal for user-driven content-based blocks is in A centrallised (multi-site) community-controlled globbing blacklist. It also got a reply by Tim Post (who is responsible for many of the anti-spam systems that SE deployed), which suggests that consideration of additional measures is ongoing.

Spam is a good thing and should be cherished :)
It means we are being noticed and deemed worthy of spamming.
The more spam we get the bigger and more important a site we must be.
I think the "come out of Beta" decision shouldn't be made on how many questions / answers you get, but on how much spam you attract ;)
(By the way: for those without my warped sense of humour, that's a joke :P )

So that's why we are still in Beta! Not enough spam!


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Dealing with Answers that should be comments
I realise it's a deficiency in the SE system, but a new user (from memory) can't post comments to questions or answers, unless it's their own.
A lot of users throughout SE as a whole do this, post an answer that really should be a comment on a question or the answer in question because they can't offer said comment because their rep os too low.
How should this be handled?
For example, in this question:
error: redefinition of ' '
There is a down-voted answer which someone else has come out in support of (rightly or wrongly) but can't add a comment because their rep is 1. But in the scheme of things, if this is in fact valid, then it could serve as a valuable comment and aid to future searchers.
For the interim I am going to manually create the comment for him and recommend his answer for deletion, but I'm open to suggestion on what the "norm" is

Flag it and let a moderator take a peek. We have the tools to directly convert an answer to a comment (so that it looks like it was posted by the user who posted the answer) or delete the post altogether. We also have the know-how to properly respond to the user to educate them about Stack Exchange and its practices.

I didn't know you could do that. Thanks!


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Old questions, marked as recently modified, but no new content
This one, for instance: ESP8266 Returns 'invalid' - Cause 4
Right now, Aug 7, 2016, 8:31am EST, the Top Questions page says this question was modified 7 hours ago. But the newest time stamp on the question's own page is 8 months old.
I often read old, bumped questions with "modified x hours ago" stamps in the Top Questions list, only to find nothing new.
I'm aware that an unanswered-question bot occasionally feeds the current-question queue, but it doesn't add anything to the question or its answers. Does up/down-voting bump the question? Voting doesn't add any to the content, either, or at least what it adds is minimal and qualitatively different from an edit, comment, or answer.
Or is it something recent that has been deleted? If there is no new content, listing it as having a recent update just adds noise to the Top Questions list.
Listing an old question isn't unreasonable in and of itself, but perhaps the "modified x hours ago" is being applied too liberally.
Update:

Where do you see this timestamp?
  That question seems to have fallen off the bottom of the page now, so let's take a more recent example:

On the Top Questions page at 160809,1322 UTC, this question's listing says "Modified 1 hour ago, Community". But on reading the question page, the most recent change I see is stamped May 11-th.

Where does it say "modified 7 hours ago"? I can only see "active yesterday" (a few hours have probably elapsed by now).

It was bumped by Community at 2016-08-07 04:44:45Z.

What I'm suggesting is that while I understand the reason for bumping, it doesn't modify the content. Perhaps a different wording on the timestamp would be appropriate, such as "Bumped  hours ago"? That would alert folks who might go looking for "What got added?", not to.

Where do you see this timestamp? I can't find that question with a "modified yesterday (or x hours ago)" message next to it. I can only see active yesterday. "Active" doesn't imply modified. Feel free to add a screenshot to your question.

(Question updated)

After talking to the other moderators and Community Managers (a step up from a moderator) it appears that this is a limitation of the Stack Exchange software. In order to "bump" a thread it has to be marked as modified. So, working as intended, even if that is not perfectly ideal. :)

Ok, thanks for that, NIck. Do you you know, can a question so stamped be assumed to have no changes or might one sometimes have new content?

I suppose it is possible it was bumped because someone actually did amend an answer, so it could be ambiguous. Judging by the response I got (in my answer) this won't necessarily be fixed in the near future.

I got a response from one of the Stack Exchange staff:

For a very long time, we only had "modified" as a general "something touched this" indicator; no extra information on what. For even longer, we didn't actually keep a record that Community was bumping, so... All there was was "modified by no user".
This might change at some point, but only if/when we change how bumping works.

Does up/down-voting bump the question?

No, voting does not bump questions. Only answers and edits do.

Or is it something recent that has been deleted? If there is no new content, listing it as having a recent update just adds noise to the Top Questions list.

No, it is a tool to move question with too few visits and answers randomly to the top of the queue. A small detail: You are not ordering questions by newest or hottest, but by 'activity' (in your screenshot). Here is an excerpt from the FAQ:

The Community user will bump non-negatively scored questions that have at least one answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that.

Questions are picked randomly from the top-viewed inactive questions.
The number of unanswered questions bumped per hour depends on the site: 4 per hour on Stack Overflow, 1 per hour on Meta, and 2 per hour on Super User and Server Fault. The default for a new site is 1 per hour.

That should answer your question, as far as I understand it.

Thanks for your observation about question ordering. I'll play with that.


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Is an ESP8266 running Arduino code question allowed?
More and more questions seem to be asking about ESP8266 programed via the Arduino IDE and running "Arduino" code, and quite a few about ESP8266 and NodeMCU.
1. Is it OK to ask about ESP8266 programed as an Arduino?
2. Should questions asking about ESP8266 programmed using LUA, etc. be closed as off topic?
3. What about questions about ESP8266 hardware are they off topic too?

My initial reaction is "I'm not sure". We seem to be getting some questions that are only slightly related to Arduinos. I'm not sure what the boundary is for Arduino-related compared to general-electronics-related.

Essentially, you either have to allow questions about alternate hardware running Arduino-style software layers, or else ban everything that is not an ATmega-based solution.  Once things like the Due, and later Intel contraptions came on the scene the floodgates were opened, and at this point there is no entity who gets to say what is vs. isn't an Arduino in the worldwide context.  More generally, the question is evidence of why arbitrary subdivision of embedded topics into Arduino, pi, and everything else is demonstrably a fundamental mistake.

Ironically this question should be in meta - it is in meta.

at this point there is no entity who gets to say what is vs. isn't an Arduino in the worldwide context - I think that's the first time I've been called an entity. :P However I'm inclined to agree with @ChrisStratton that the distinction between Arduino and not-Arduino is becoming rather blurred.

For me, here are suitable cases:

Problem setting Arduino IDE to "talk to" ESP8266, possibly including wiring, as this is directly related to Arduino IDE
Problem connecting ESP8266 to an Arduino, be it a wiring or program issue, as long as the program in on Arduino side

However, the following cases are off-topic:

Issue with NodeMCU, lua language
Issue with ESP8266 API
Issue with connecting an ESP8266 to anything else than Arduino

I agree with all your points above but what about the case where someone has switched out an Arduino for an ESP8266, using the same (similar) code, IDE and peripherals?  If someone was trying to measure range with an UNO and ultrasonic sensor and then switched the UNO for an ESP?  I thinks its OK to answer questions where the ESP is being used as a stand in for an Arduino, but does anyone agree?

As a matter of fact, ESP8266 and Arduino are 2 VERY different beasts, and having a similar program will not show the same effects (and defects). The case you describe seems dedicated to ESP8266 experts, not Arduino experts. For me this should go to EE rather than here, until some more specific site is defined.

As Arduino-branded boards now include Intel- and ARM family-based boards, the lines can get kind of blurred. If an Arduino-branded, ESP8266-powered MCU board were to appear, should we include it as on-topic but exclude AI-Thinker ESP-01 or other ESP-xx boards?
An alternative to including ESP questions is to Beta an ESP site. But that path leads to fragmenting the {electronics, programming, applications, etc.} questions into too many sites. EE/SE's often unwelcoming stance on Arduino questions began the process. (Or was it already prevalent w/in SE? My experience here doesn't go back that far).
I'd propose we don't feed the process, but adjust Arduino SE's boundaries, and even its name if necessary, to fit the community, not the other way around. Embedded Systems Engineering - what we really do here, despite that most of us are hobbyists - is multi-disciplinary activity that 1) includes electronics, programming, board layout and building, and software tools (IDEs, libraries); and 2) touches hydraulics, robotics, optics, sonar, data communication, networks, chemistry & biology (brewing, f/ex). I've seen us field questions in all of these topics in my time here.
This cross-disciplinary hobby (or career! ) makes a hugely rich learning environment for all of us and we'd give up a lot of that by splitting off some processor or another discipline. Our contributors collectively know a heck of a lot about a lot of things and share it generously. We should encourage that.
We've mostly managed to avoid having hard boundaries and getting unpleasant with new folks that wander close to one, as a few SE sites do. I'd like to encourage that and keep us more inclusive.

I think it depends on how you see "Arduino". Arduino started as Arduino.cc: a (open hardware) board and (open source) software provider.
However Arduino has moved on, and now the community "Arduino" is far more important then the companies (arduino.cc and arduino.org).
The "core" of this community is the API the company Arduino designed. The community added lots of libraries on top of and extending this API. The community ported the API to other processors. Anyone porting this API/libraries to a other board adds the boards to the community.
As the Arduino API and many of its libraries are ported to ESP8266 based boards; implementations on these boards using the Arduino API and libraries belong to the Arduino community (but are not strictly speaking Arduino).
As stackexchange is a community driven site I think it would be weird to pick the company card and not the community card. Therefore IMHO these boards should be supported here.
Another way to look at it: if you ask this question for ESP8266 based boards; why don't you ask this question for Teensy boards or adafruit boards and other vendors? What sets ESP8266 apart that you ask it for ESP8266 and not for others? Do you realize that Paul Stoffregen (maker of Teensy) did lots (if not most) of the multi platform implementations in Arduino?
Suppose we leave out all non real Arduino boards, ..... what with arduino.org versus arduino.cc .... Will we only support Arduino.org boards? Or Arduino.cc?
Do you really want to go into this discussion? I don't.
For me Arduino is the Arduino community. I embraced ESP8266 just like I embraced Teensy and Adafruit. They are part of the community. Without them the company Arduino is nothing.

Yes, but you could argue that if this site caters for anything relevant to the "Arduino Community" where does Electronics Stack Exchange fit in? Or Stack Overflow?

A very valid question.


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Can the timeout on editing comments please be increased?
There's a 5 minute rule about editing comments.
It should be more like 30. Some of us are slow thinkers, need to consult references, need time to review and edit our work, ....
Buzzzzzzzzzzz your time is up, next contestant please!
If nothing more, check the time the user starts editing, not the time the user save the changes!

I think it is so that comments don't get completely changed, which makes the subsequent comments (under it) make no sense. Basically if I wait 5 minutes after you make a comment, I can be sure you won't change it.
I think in your case you accidentally pressed Enter half-way through typing a comment, and then had to edit it. In that case you can just self-delete the comment (after copying what you had already typed) and then start a new one, being careful not to do that again.
You have all the time in the world to type a comment, just don't "commit" it half-way through the process.


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Somewhat helpful but still spammy user - Not sure what to do about it
This user just awakened an ancient thread on EE.SE simply to promote his own article. He tried to make it look like it was not his article - obvious spam, nothing to see, please move along.
Now, I don't take kindly to spammers, so I checked his account here on Arduino.SE, and.. it's complicated.
Every post but two has a link to his personal website, often without further comment and almost never even hinting that he wrote them. He also doesn't mention the answers, but forces people to click through. So far, so bad.
What's problematic is that the information in the link may very well be good answers to the questions, sometimes the only answer. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't want to flag all the posts as spam. Maybe a stern warning from a moderator is in order?
I know too little about the culture here at Arduino.SE, but I feel that something is not right with those posts.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I have a quick question: how do you know that these are his articles that he is linking to? Most of them should be removed anyway as they are "link only answers," but I can't see anything to prove that the sites that he links to are his own. (Please reply to me using @Anonymous somewhere in your message so I'll get a notification that you replied to me.)

At the bottom of one of the linked pages (at least) are the words by the author: "I am Syed Zain Nasir". So, he is self-identifying as the author on the target site. It isn't as obvious on the SE posts he is linking to his own pages. Personally I usually say "my page ..." rather than "see this page" to make it clear I am referencing my own work.

@AnonymousPenguin Indeed, what Nick Gammon says, all the articles he links to has "By Syed Zain Nasir" in the top bar, and they end with "I am Syed Zain Nasir, the founder of The Engineering Projects (TEP)."

I think we might just comment on his answers and mention he should provide more details. Putting links (even to one's own posts) does not seem bad too me, as long as the articles are related to the question (obviously!) AND the content of the linked article is put back (in part, only the relevant stuff) into the answer. Adding a claim that the answerer is also the poster of the linked article might be welcome too, but not mandatory from my viewpoint.


text:
The rift is healed!
At last Arduino is back together again.

https://blog.arduino.cc/2016/10/01/two-arduinos-become-one-2/

The rift has been healed.  Massimo and Federico even hugged on stage (awww ;) )
We can now hope to get back to some form of normality - a single set of Arduino boards, just one Arduino IDE to wrestle with...

Good job! Great news!


text:
Are online Arduino simulators on topic?
For example, could I ask a question here about how to use Arduino features in http://circuits.io?

Isn't that interesting! I just discovered circuits.io a couple days ago.

Feel free to come and ask me a question here

I don't see why not. As long as the question isn't about how to use the simulator itself (they should support their own product in that respect). Bear in mind that simulators don't always mimic real life hardware. Exact timing constraints, and marginal voltage levels might not be reproduced in the same way that real electronics would.


text:
What is the process for deleting/merging duplicate tags?
What is the general procedure for deleting or merging tags that are duplicates/synonyms of other tags?
As I understand, unused tags will get deleted automatically after a period of time.
Where tags should be merged, is there a process where the less established tags get migrated over to the more established tag?

See What are tag synonyms and merged tags? How do they work?
Users with more than 1250 reputation and a total answer score of 5 or more on the tag, can suggest tag synonyms. Users with a total answer score (total upvotes minus total downvotes) of 5 or more on the tag, can vote for tag synonyms. Suggestions will be automatically approved when they reach a score of 4, and automatically deleted when they reach a score of -2.
Moderators can merge synonyms into the parent tag.

Although this question is answered I found this post on meta.stackoverflow that is also useful. (Credit to Kedarnath)

One way to remove tag is just remove the duplicate tag from all the tagged question (and even replace it with the appropriate tag). After 24 hours all non-used zombie tags get deleted by system.
How can we get rid of misspelled and unused (or “zombie”) tags?
Another way is to post the question on meta and request for the particular tag to be merged or deleted. Moderator/developer will merge/remove it.


text:
Flagging answers as "not an answer"
We seem to be getting quite a few answers flagged as "not an answer". Whilst some certainly were not answers, others seem to be flagged simply because they didn't fully answer the question, or were a bad answer.
If we look at the pop-up box for flagging we see this:

Notice that the flag needs that the answer does not attempt to answer the question. Examples could be:

Gibberish
Someone saying they have the same problem as in the question
The original poster (OP) clarifying the question in an answer rather than editing the original question
Asking a new question as an answer
Someone seeking clarification of the question (this should be done as a comment on the question)
Someone commenting on one of the other answers

However these are not suitable for flagging as "not an answer":

Bad answers
Wrong answers
Incomplete answers

In these cases you, the user of this site, have options available to you. You can:

Add a comment explaining why you think the answer is wrong
Vote the answer down (preferably commenting why you are doing this, so that a third party will understand why an answer got down votes)
Post a better answer yourself

Is it only me or I want downvotes to be free after like 1.5k rep. The number of bad anwsers (including mine) are quite high. There is no real "close answer" so yeah...


text:
How can I find a closed question?
Nightky Sin just posted a duplicate of his original question.
I think I remember him asking the same question 2 hours after his first question. That question was most likely closed.
So my question is; how can I verify that this is indeed his third attempt at asking the same question all over again?
(And thus be a bit more harsh in pointing this out in the comments)

You can find the user's ID (click on his/her profile) - yours is 2881. Then do a search in the ordinary search box. You will probably find that the user number is already filled in, in the search box:

You can then add deleted:1/deleted:yes to search for deleted posts (if you have enough reputation):
user:2881 deleted:1

Or, you can search for closed questions with closed:1/closed:yes:
user:2881 closed:1

You can filter this even more by adding the is:question option:
user:2881 closed:1 is:question

A user that keeps asking low-quality questions will probably eventually encounter a question-asking block, as part of Stack Exchange's system for keeping questions of good quality. See What can I do when getting “We are no longer accepting questions/answers from this account”?

You didn't bring enough attention to the usefulness of the deleted/closed options. (Side note: only mods/10K+ rep users can see/search for deleted posts.)

What do you mean by "usefulness"? Can you elaborate on how they could be used?

I don't seem to have enough reputation to search for deleted posts (except my own). closed:1 I can do. Nice to know SE will limit questions eventually. I guess I have to earn another 3879 points (-;

@Gerben I was wrong about the 10K+; it's 10K on a graduated site. Here, it's 2K, so you should already be able to do so (if I'm reading the docs right)...

@NickGammon I edited your answer to reflect what I meant. Feel free to roll back/modify my edit, but I felt like it expanded the answer's usefulness without changing the meaning.


text:
What is the standard practice for when the OP edits the question to include the solution?
What is the standard practice for when the OP edits the question to include the solution?
For example:

error while loading libtinfo.so.5 - SOLVED
DB:NO RESP Using inet.httpPOST on loop()
SOLVED - Different behaviour during bootloader burning
Arduino UNO stops working after a while - SOLVED

Ideally, the OP should have posted the solution as an answer and then marked it as the solution.
In some cases, I would like to edit the question by deleting the solution and then post the solution as an answer. The down side to this is that this answer would have no upvotes and may appear insignificant compared to other posts with upvotes. Also, the OP may no longer be active and/or doesn't mark the answer as the solution.
For some posts (especially those without an answer) the correct course of action would be to close/delete the question.

I've been chatting with other moderators about this. One suggestion was to revert the edited question (where the answer is) and ask the OP to make a proper answer instead.
If this isn't practical (eg. if the question is old) the other suggestion is to make your own answer, but make it a Community Wiki answer. That way you don't claim credit for someone else's work.
You could put at the bottom of the answer:
Posted on behalf of the OP.

A good method is to leave a comment to educate the OP that what he/she has done is not in-step with the Stack Exchange system. After all, the aim of this site is that the community builds up and educate other users, in order to improve the overall quality of the site.
We then leave it up to the OP to do the right thing; revert the question back to the original and post the solution as an answer and accept it.
As an example, @Chris Stratton posted this eloquent comment:

@OP in the stack exchange system, questions are marked resolved not by editing the title[/question], but by accepting an answer. If none of the provided answers matches your solution, provide your own and accept that.

@Chris Stratton do you mind if other users use your comment as a sort of a boiler-plate comment?


text:
CircuitLab circuit icon for drawing schematic diagrams
When was the CircuitLab feature (and its icon) added to arduino.stackexchange?
Note, there's an obscurely-titled question, “How do I describe or draw my circuit in such a way that everybody understands what I am building?” to which I've added an answer mentioning the CircuitLab feature.  I think the feature was added to arduino.stackexchange during October 2016, and would like to know more about it.

The status-completed tag was added to that question 2016-10-13: http://meta.arduino.stackexchange.com/posts/12/revisions

Can't believe I missed this myself. Awesome!


text:
How should I respond to questions that only provide code snippets?
I've been seeing this trend where people, who post questions that are related to problems with their code, just post the part of their code that they think is "pertinent" for the public. How should I respond to that? It's getting quite annoying and I don't know if any of you are seeing this too.

I'm pretty sure you meant question instead of answer in your title. Please edit to make the title meaningful. Something like "How should I respond to questions that only provide code snippets?".

It's a well-known problem. I set up a web site a while ago: Snippets R Us! to address this issue.
I've seen plenty of times a post that "this must be the problem" (posting a couple of lines of code) and "this can't possibly be the problem" (omitting a whole lot of code).
A useful comment you can make is:

Please post a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example

The Snippets R Us site tries to explain why this is a good idea. Often narrowing down the problem to a small example clarifies in the poster's mind what the issue is, and isn't.

Or: http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve


text:
What do you do with ignoramuses?
What are you supposed to do with the ignoramuses that ask a patently idiotic question and then refuse point blank to believe any of the answers because they have formed their own (completely erroneous) opinion? All the sites seem to suffer from them, but I haven't yet found a suitable solution short of closing the question "because you are an idiot" (well, not those exact words, but that kind of sentiment).
I see them all the time across the network - from people thinking you can make a yellow spot of light float in mid-air by crossing a red and green laser beam (duh...!) to this most recent one where the OP is convinced that because you can make a simple tuned circuit for low frequencies on a breadboard it would be simple and cheap to create a similar circuit for receiving the complex packets transmitted by a 2.4GHz nRF24L01 (in that case it got closed as off topic, thankfully. They don't always). Even though he has been told by numerous people that no, it can't be done by a mere mortal (certainly not by someone that would ask such a question and most definitely not below the cost of an nRF24L01), and shown alternative communications systems that would better fit his requirements, he still refuses to believe us.
And yes, this is (to a certain extent) a rant. It's also an opening for discussion on how we can best deal with these kind of people.
They seem to lack a basic understanding of the simplest underlying principles of physics and are completely close minded to any new information or teaching that doesn't fit into their small distorted little world.

Not every question is a good one, that's for sure. Plus you get ones that request an answer "within two hours" (assignment due, clearly).
You have options:

Vote the question down (which you can do without penalty)
Vote to close (eg. as too broad). The one about the 2.4 GHz was really about electronics, not Arduino, so you could also vote to close as off-topic.
Comment, seeking clarification.
Comment, pointing out they should try something simpler first

Finally:

Ignore them. The question (especially with low votes) will disappear down into the unanswered pile.

It's probably preferable to also vote down or vote-to-close before ignoring them, otherwise SE thinks it is a good question which no-one could answer, which counts against our percentage of questions answered figure. (Currently 75%).

I saw that one :) I think the best thing to do is pretty much to close the question, and if he asks a similar question AGAIN (because his previous question about the topic has been closed) to just close that one too.
An other way is to implement the "penalty box" system from Stack Overflow. Maybe for user above 2.5k rep?


text:
What if a comment solve the question?
Good days all!
I am new to this forum, and I am trying lo learn how the "rules" here.
After reading several post, such as  this, this, and this, I can assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that you can use comment to ask for clarification without intention (yet) to answer the question.
What if instead of asking for clarrification, the comment is solved the problem? like this question, it turns out the "error" was the method OP used to observe wether his Arduino works or not, and the OP himself confirm that the problem is solved on comment section. My first thought is "Oh great, it solved. Nothing to do here.", but the question still comes up in the "unanswered" section. Well, nothing is wrong with it but it's make me itch. The accepted answers here, also does not cover about it.
So, what comes in my mind is turn my comment into an answer. (I've mentioned that I'm trying to learn how the "rules", right?) Is it appropriate to ask for accepting an answer?

Stack Exchange considers comments to be ephemeral - that is, they may be deleted. Thus an "answer" which is just a comment is ultimately not helpful. However initially you may make a comment to test the waters, and then if the OP acknowledges that this is the correct answer, we now have this problem that you mention. I suggest:

If you are the one who made the comment which answered the question, turn it into an answer (ie. copy/paste, or retype with extra detail). Perhaps underneath the question make a further comment that you have now answered it "officially" and hint that the OP could accept the answer.
If you are not the "owner" of the answer, make a comment asking the person who commented to turn it into an answer. You can use the @name syntax to get them "pinged" to notice the comment.
If this doesn't achieve anything (after, say, a few days) turn the comment into an answer yourself, giving attribution to the person who made the comment. (eg. "As Joe Bloggs said in his comment ..."). I have an example of doing that here. In that particular case the OP also answered the question. This behaviour is OK - you are allowed to answer your own questions.

References
See:

How should I handle questions which are answered in the comments?
What should be done with questions that have been self-resolved as a comment instead of an answer?

We discussed this on meta.serverfault a short while ago and decided that you should Steal comments that answer the question and post them as an answer. You can always tick the Community Wiki box if you're not comfortable rep whoring.

Also see this answer:

Answer-comments should be reposted as answers — but this is no excuse for plagiarism

In other words, don't try to pass the answer off as your own, if you didn't write it.

At another StackExchange metas you can see a tip: if you can post an answer after reading some comments, do it. Because every correct question need a correct answer, not only useful comments.
So if it is your own question and comment helps you to solve the problem, invite its author to post it as answer.


text:
Pin 13 - Frozen
Our beloved chatroom: "Pin 13" is frozen (due to inactivity).
Can we re-open the chatroom?
Theoretically, we could start a new chatroom, but that wouldn't be a very neat solution (it can be hard to find anything back, if we keep making new "Pin 13"'s.
Can we avoid getting it frozen?
How to avoid getting the same problem in the future? Can a room be pinned, or made as default general chat of a certain SE? Or do we have to program an Arduino to post random links to it every now and then? ;D
Should we even?
The room is frozen, since it was inactive. Theoretically, this means that the room seems to have little function.
Though I believe that it can be usefull to have a general chat.

How can it be beloved and inactive at the same time?

@Dat Ha, I believe it had sparked a lot of interesting discussions. But it may be inactive from time to time.

I've unfrozen it.

How can it be beloved and inactive at the same time?

Dat Ha has a good point. It has gone recently for 32 days without activity.
If it goes for 14 days without activity it is frozen automatically. I suggest you chat away in it from time to time to stop that happening.

I think it has potential, and has proven to be usefull. Currently, it just doesn't really keep momentum. My question was also: 'should we even', if anyone has an interesting topic, he/she could create a room specific for that topic. But it feels a little odd to not have a general chat.

It seems the Arduino users aren't all that chatty. I think a lot of other parts of Stack Exchange have quite active chat.

There's a lot of foreigners and one-time visitors, very few seem to stay.

Ah well. It's a bit of a different environment to (say) cooking, where if you are interested in it you are likely to stay and discuss things. Being an environment for newbies, the Arduino SE tends to attract people who just want to get their homework done. Of course, this isn't everyone.

it happened again

75% of users on this site turn up, ask one question, get their answer, and are never seen again.
22% of users on this site turn up, ask one question, don't bother waiting around for an answer, and are never seen again.
2% of users on this site are those that show an interest and either want to help others or have an inquiring mind that wants to learn more.
The remaining 1% are us.

(Statistics source: the back of my sofa)
Of all the users on the site maybe 3% would find it useful. 1% of those would use it to whinge about the 97% that never come back, the others wouldn't even know it was there.
So what use is a general chat room? Most chat discussions are related to a specific question/answer and thus are between just a couple of people for a short time, and those chat rooms can be created at will as they are needed.

I agree, which is probably a problem in it's own. Pin 13 getting frozen is just one of the results. But it's not the only one, probably also why the beta takes so long or question quality is low on average (afaik)? I'm not sure if and how we can improve it, I think it's because Arduino is specifically aimed at hobbyists. Which also isn't something that could/would/should change?  The main point was that I thought it would be weird to just give up on a general chat because of it, but a general chat also needs a topic from time to time. (And in that case we could use a designated chatroom aswel)


text:
Close reason: shopping questions
Can we get the commonly used close reason of "shopping questions not allowed" added?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because questions seeking recommendations for specific products or places to purchase them are off-topic as they are rarely useful to others and quickly obsolete. Instead, describe your situation and the specific problem you're trying to solve.

That text is taken direct from the ElectronicEngineering SE. Their help pages have:

and it is not about …

a shopping or buying recommendation

It does make a bit of a grey line with our help files:

On topic:
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.

Asking which board would be best for a specific job, or finding out the differences between boards, I would say is fine. Asking where to buy something from, or a vague "I can't buy X because I can't find it in my local shop, what could I get instead?" should be closed as off topic.
This gives a definite reason why the question is closed, not just vague "too broad" or "opinion based" or "unclear what you're asking".
The blog post linked in the close reason text above (and copied here so you don't have to scroll up) gives a good discussion about the sentiment behind it.

Do you have any recent questions that warrant this? I am wondering how often you find that such a close reason could be useful.

It's one that is used all the time on EE, and we do get quite a lot of annoying pointless shopping questions which really aren't of any benefit to the site as a whole, only to the one user that is asking it. We do have a Hardware Recommendations SE these days where users can be directed.

We are required to consult with the community before adding more close reasons, so let's wait and see what others think. :)

@NickGammon I have fleshed the proposal out with more detail.

@NickGammon: Do you have any recent questions that warrant this? Here are some not so recent but still.... http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/18277/buying-arduino-parts-different-manufacturers, http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/20524/ball-launcher-machine-what-parts-to-get, http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/6769/help-with-parts-identification-from-arduino-starter-kit-from-aliexpress, http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/11640/arduino-stepper-motor-standing-desk-help/11641#11641

Finding them is not that easy, since they often get closed for other reasons (I know I close them for other reasons - sometimes even using the text above) - so they disappear from the listings. We don't suffer as much as EE, which on an average day has two or three just on the front page - often more. I shall flag them up here as they arrive though.

One just cropped up: http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/32603/ir-laser-speckle

And another: http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/32610/gps-module-to-a-bluetooth-transmitter

It's really tempting to have this reason, on the other hand there are a fair number of posters whose key problem is that they bought the wrong thing (classically a bipolar bridge motor shield, or in some cases, an Arduino for a problem where it is not a resonable solution) so an outright ban on shopping questions may not always be unproductive.  Many of them can be closed as off topic since they aren't really about Arduino but about something else - like that laser module one.

It seems we moderators have the power to add a new reason for closing as off-topic, although it needs more than one of us to approve it.
To guide us, please vote up Majenko's suggestion if you approve of it (and vote it down if you don't). Comments or replies can also be used to argue for or against this proposal.

Perhaps we should widen this question? There are three slots for custom close reasons. IMHO, too many questions are closed for being "Unclear what you are asking" when, in reality, it is perfectly clear what is being asked - it's just that "Unclear what you are asking" is being used as a catch-all where there isn't a better alternative.

@sempaiscuba By all means vote up my answer as a way of approving it, also Majenko's (if you haven't already). What is the specific wording you want to add?

Oh, I'm quite happy with the wording for this reason.  I just think that before we add one new custom close reason, we should try to get consensus on what all our custom close reasons should be.  This answer to another question here on meta illustrates the problem I was talking about.

With respect to Nick's answer:

please vote up Majenko's suggestion if you approve of it [...]

I take it that this proposal is accepted by the community.
I would like to ask the moderators to include it in the help center's page on on-topicness as part of standing policy. The help center is the place where we would point new users to to learn about how to use the site. It is also more likely1 for new users to check the help center vs. going through a site's meta to figure out what is on-topic and what is not.
Something along the line of the snippet taken from EE should do fine. If you like it could be fleshed out a little more to outline what kind of questions are ok that are related to purchasing recommendations. This is from RaspberryPi.SE:

[...] However, if you have a specific product and you want to know if it is suitable for a specific purpose [...], that's fine. Asking what to look for in a kind of product is also fine [...].

1) I accept the fact that both probabilities are rather small unfortunately.

Activity on this page is fairly limited. :) However I have no objection to the proposal. What was the specific proposed wording you had in mind?

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


text:
Should Arduino SE get a documentation section?
Arduino, along with a couple of other subjects, are quite precise. I mean, all programming questions mostly consern the Arduino IDE and I find that the Arduino.cc's tutorial section rubish.
After looking at what Stack Overflow has in there documentation section, I would find it very convinient and great if we can import that into this site. It has many GREAT tutorials that could solve around 5% of the questions on this site (just a guess, no actual numbers).
And if we, as the Arduino comunity put a little more effort into it, we can turn it into the (maybe) greatest Arduino tutorial book / site out there. I see a lot of benefits for it. Mostly that We can share a lot of knowlage without having to ask a precise question.
So who's with me?

Beginners tend to not read documentation, but certainly I agree in principle that good documentation is very important. I'm not sure if the SO documentation project can be used here, but if it can it sounds like a good idea.

I would suggest that it could be a prominent part of the tour so people would know about it.  Like the programming tag and Prettify and the Markdown Editor Help section.  (And we should have a LaTex tag if that's what it takes to be able to copy answers from EE SE to here without the need to reformat our math into FORTRAN 77

We can make an answering bot: it automatically google the question and offers the first search result from this site as answer.

I'm not sure documentation per se is going to be useful. As Nick has noted reading documentation is something that many of our incoming users ("Ardueenies") are averse to doing.
Another thing they seem averse to doing is searching. The number of duplicate questions we get seems to be rather high. So instead of spending our time on documentation, it may be better to put our efforts into crafting "FAQ" questions where we cover, in detail, a specific topic. Then when we get a question that asks what that FAQ question covers we just close it as a duplicate pointing to the FAQ question.
This has proved successful on EE, especially for the question "What power supply do I want" or "Will my power supply blow up my project because of too many amps" and similar that seem to get asked about every 15 minutes. They all get almost immediately closed as a duplicate of "Choosing power supply, how to get the voltage and current ratings?"
Questions that people ask all the time that could be covered by this kind of thing (please suggest more):

I have added a shield that has pins in all the Arduino's holes. Can I still use some of them?
Can I run my Arduino of XXX power supply?
Can I use an external power supply for my Arduino and still plug it into the USB? Will it blow up?
How do you merge two k0d3z together? Will do you it for me? plz?
How do I communicate between my Arduino and my PC / a Website / Neptune?
What is the extra 6 pin header for on the Uno R3?

The list could go on for miles I am sure. Building up a store of these good quality in-depth answers would not only make life easier on us, since we would have to write less answers in the long run, but also would help the people asking the questions as they then get handed a well crafted, well thought out, detailed answer to their question instead of a half-arsed answer that we can't be bothered to flesh out because the same question has been asked time and time again and if only they'd spend the time doing a little searching, reading, and thinking about what they have found they would come up with the answer themselves.

How to communicate with GPS and GSM at the same time: is a popular one too.

Yes, I saw that one arrive just now ;)

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/216606/which-stack-exchange-sites-use-mathjax/216607#216607

https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/45/how-do-we-get-syntax-highlighting/2441?noredirect=1#comment858_2441

I agree, @Majenko.  FAQ comes to mind.  I am amazed how many times I post a question on Google only to be directed to a 3-year-old answer posted in EE SE or here.  Maybe in the tour it could be made clear that we are not a free software-production service.  Even better, perhaps automate the "Welcome ... take the tour" thing also.  That way it doesn't look like any particular one of us is trying to act like a gatekeeper.  (Mea culpa)


text:
Electorate badge description

The Electorate gold badge description says 'Vote on 600 questions and 25% or more of total votes are on questions'
The word questions is duplicate and it is unclear. Let we change this text!

You are changing the meaning with your suggestions. The meaning is:

Vote on 600 questions - first requirement
25% or more total votes are on questions - second requirement

So for example, you might have made 2400 votes, and of that 2400, 600 are on questions (and therefore 1800 are on answers). This would meet the requirement for the badge.

Vote on 600 posts and 25% or more of total votes are on questions

Vote on 600 messages and 25% or more of total votes are on questions

Nothing to change, this description looks nice.

I don't quite understand why your question says we should change the text, and then you answer saying we don't need to change it.

This is a kind of discussion. Check (vote) one answer you prefer to introduce at this description. Or write another, 4th answer.


text:
Documentation for Arduino SE
Here is a question that is already asked with a similar intension. But i am trying to be more specific.
Let me explain how my question is different. Even-though they are towards the same goal, the linked question seems to be very generic and would invite a wide spectrum of answers. This question explains why we need a documentation for arduino, with example.
FAQ is of course the best thing for beginners. but looking at the bigger picture, just like we have documentation for C#, which is indeed helpful because it is more understandable and generic than the QAs.
The number of questions unnecessarily increase(Not an issue..) if people don't find the exact question(even-though people find similar ones).
just like how i need to ask this question.
Consider a situation where i need to interface some new module to my arduino, i am looking into Arduino SE and find find questions that are related. like "How to connect my XX module?", "I have tried this code to interface XX module but is not working" etc. but, a beginner would be more interested in a more descriptive document which would help him do his job from the beginning, till the end.
hope i am making some sense.

+1 You pretty much got it! This is really why I find it great if specific SEs such as Arduino, Pi, (cooking?!?)..... should get documentation. Though we might get more "useless" questions, making some stuff clear is very important. There are really not enough good tutorial out there that can cover many because they are often made by a person or a small group. If all of this community would work togheter to write some great documentation for the Arduino an many popular sensors/modules. It would be very helpful for everybody else

Also, we frequently get questions about error messages. If we could make a documentation about all of the possible error messages out there, it could really help many users (including me!).

Possible duplicate of Should Arduino SE get a documentation section?

We could set up a meta page with a list of common errors/questions/etc.

@AnonymousPenguin thats a great idea...! but does that match a good documentation.

@PrashanthBenny, What is your actual question?

@sa_leinad i am requesting a nice documentation portal for arduino. Just like how stack overflow has got one!


text:
Be wary of accepting edits that are comments of third parties
There are still the usual new users, who, as they are unable to leave a comment, try to suggest an edit to the OP's question, in order to get their point on to the page...
I recently rejected this edit, which was by a third party, who did not have sufficient reputation to comment. The edit actually stated as much:

EDIT - Not enough points to comment...
I am programming it in Arduino IDE with C. Also, my hardware works
  fine. I've used it to do other things. The code is what I'm not sure
  what to do.

If one does not check the identity of the author of the edit carefully - against the identity of the OP - it could be assumed by the reviewer (in some cases) that the comment is from the OP (and hence legitimate) in which case, then the edit might be accepted.
As an aside, I am really not sure why new (and inexperienced) users with low reputation are allowed to edit, but not leave a comment, as a bad edit can do much more damage than a bad comment can... but that is a SE issue, in general, and not one that can be resolved on SE Arduino Meta.

One argument could be that the OP can make edits without needing permission, so you should look more cautiously at suggested edits. It is effectively a red flag that this was not the OP. However I'm inclined to agree that if you can't make comments (yet) then you shouldn't be able to slip "comments" in as an edit.