text:
Rejected edit results in loss of constructive code modification
I rejected this suggested edit from an anonymous user, as it clearly conflicted with the original post. The odd thing was though, the edit actually seemed to be rather constructive, as it modified the code (not in an insignificant way), and I was hoping that the suggested edit might be posted as an answer but after having just taken another look at the question I can see that it has not.
Should I post this code modification as an answer myself? By the time that you get around to reading this question, I may have already done so, as it does seem a shame to lost some constructive effort, that was made by someone.
Also, who are these anonymous users? Doesn't anyone who makes an edit actually have to log on to the site? If not, then that seems rather dangerous and foolhardy.

Should I post this code modification as an answer myself?

It seems odd for someone to "answer" a question by editing the question instead of posting an answer.
If you think the edit helps you might make an answer yourself, attributing it to some anonymous editor.

Also, who are these anonymous users?

That's another odd thing. Perhaps the fact that the question was migrated from another part of SE explains that bit.

Cheers, I've posted the answer.

It has happened again, with the same post, very strange. Someone clearly is trying to (possibly legitimately) edit the question. See  here. I have rejected it again, to be on the safe side. If it is the OP, they should just create an account.

It looks like it is the OP - Herioz - (who has an account anyway).

Ok, thanks for looking the account up.  Well I've left a comment on the question. However, it is odd that, as they have an account that it still comes through as anon user... Unless they aren't bothering to log in with it, I guess.

You can always post it as a community wiki. That way you are not taking the credit for the work of someone else.

Good point. I need to revisit that question, it does seem that it was the OP making those edits after all.


text:
Voting to close new users' questions without comment
This question, How to compile the bootloader mega 2560 to 57600 speed?, by a new user, has four close votes, but no comments.
Yes, it is a terrible question, as it stands, and yes, if it was from a seasoned user, then it could/should be voted to close without  comment, as they should know better.
However, as this is a new user, who probably doesn't understand how SE works, a little prompt in a comment, won't hurt. Yes, they should have read the "tour", but when you are looking for an answer, and you are new to SE, then having to wade through the tour, is the last thing on your mind.
I've left a comment, and if no update appears after a few days then yes, it should be closed, as the user has probably disappeared, found their own solution, or no longer cares.
The point I'm trying to make is that, if you are reviewing, and see a bad question, check to see how long the user has been on the site and bearing in mind that we were all "dumb" new users once, just give them a nod in the right direction...

I would encourage all users to leave a comment if the post needs some work - we all need to be educated about how SE works. I would go further ans say that comments should even comment on experienced users posts if they are not up to scratch. The reason: new users read these posts, so while you might not be educating the OP you will educate all those reading it!

The Arduino SE is a site for newbies (generally speaking) so I think we have to be reasonably tolerant of questions that look a bit vague. If it was Astrophysics Stack Exchange you might expect people to know more about the subject material.

[I want to use this post, How to merge 2 batteries socketof 6v each, as a reference.]
I think guys that doesn't know the Ohm's law and doesn't know how to program are beyond redemption. And they want help building an intergalactic laser shooting robot by 2:00 PM, fast!
No amount of help will do any good for them. They are people that don't make any effort learning; they come here to have someone solve their needs.
This kind of posts degrade this site quality. They are not good for the OP and for the rest, it is just junk, pollution.
I vote for a quicker and stricter repeal of junk posts.

Some question is clearly under par, but who is SE for? Professionals only witch complicated questions and minimum of 25 years in the business or someone that don't have the skills or experience, but would like to get a answer to something basic? The "Be nice" policy talks about be patience, help and guide. I have seen some ironic, rude and not that inviting/welcoming comments and how is this hurting the SE Arduino's reputation?

Programming is hard; so is electronic. You need years of study to reach just entry-level skills. You can't replace years of study with random tips & advices from Internet. People that think so are dilettantes, persons who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, especially in a desultory or superficial way.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Does Arduino beta have a community ad?
I realize beta sites don't have ads on the site, but I'd like to put one for the site on rotation at https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/ (they are being renewed for the year now).
If not and someone wants to whip something up, please do -- leave a comment if you need a bit of time, otherwise tomorrow I will.  Technically, the ads can be replaced after posting although that may be limited by when it crosses the upvote threshold.
The meta thread on RPi.SE is here: https://raspberrypi.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/893/community-promotion-ads-2017 For those that aren't familiar with this, Stack Exchange does it annually for all graduated sites.  The ads appear in the side bar and have a target link (which would be Arduino.SE).

Where would it go? I went to the Pi site and didn't see any ads.

You're not the only one -- never something I've looked into.  Anyway, it's in the sidebar right  above "Hot Network Questions".

I had to disable Adblock, and various trackers to see it.

Yeah there's google driven ads in there; sometime last year they started doing it on selected sites for all users regardless of rep (I believe there's a top bar one everywhere for the new-ish).  We were so blessed because we have a lot of page views...

Here, I widened your graphic a bit:

\O/ You should throw it up on EE now too, all the "Community Promotion" renewals are done at the same time: http://meta.electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/6082/community-promotion-ads-2017

I found one over on Electrical Engineering done last year by Camil Staps:

The new criteria require it be 300x250, though:

Yuk, it needs to be re-done. :)

@NickGammon Padding instead of stretching seems an improvement.

Yes but it looks a bit, er, bold. It should be possible to redo it easily enough.

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


text:
Please don't flag as "Very Low Quality" answers you just don't agree with
The "Very Low Quality" flag has a rather specific meaning, shown when you bring up the flags menu:

This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

See What does the "very low quality" flag mean in regard to answers?
The flag is intended for:

Severe formatting issues
Incomprehensibility
Other severe content problems: This includes answers that don't attempt to answer the question.

Answers that are wrong, or vague, don't come into this category. Just vote the answer down, or make a comment explaining why you don't agree with the answer.
If the answer attempts to answer the question (even if the answer is wrong, or brief) that doesn't qualify it for VLQ flag.
For example, I would describe "read the datasheet" as not attempting to answer the question. However suggesting something that would not work, or would not help, is not very low quality. It's just wrong.


text:
Am I allowed to ask a question about explaining what some lines of a code does?
so I have recently started working with Arduino boards and C++, I was doing this project and with luck (meaning I tried random lines of code) I got what I wanted.
However, I don't want to learn this way so I want to ask the members in this site to explain how each line of code works (not the really basic ones). I don't know if I am allowed to do that or not? so please tell me.
Thanks.

Sure you can. What we don't like are questions like:

I got this code. Explain it to me.

In your case it's only parts of the code you need more understanding of. As long as you make it clear which blocks of code are confusing you and maybe how you think they may be working, we'd be more than happy to help.

As long as you are asking about a couple of lines of code. Don't post an entire sketch of hundreds of lines and expect a line-by-line explanation.


text:
Does a (legitimate) desire to graduate from beta lead to be (excessively) tolerant of poor questions and/or answers?
I'm new (approx 2 months) to the SE community and right now I'm active only in two of its sites: Arduino beta and Electrical Engineering (EE). But I'm already amazed by how opposed the cultures of these two sites are.
EE has a somewhat wack-a-noob attitude and is very unforgiving of users that don't show any research effort or previous work before asking their questions. After reading a lot of posts from EE meta, I think the reason for that seems to be a widespread concern that valuable contributors will fly away out of frustration if the quality bar is lowered, thus making the site worse off. That looks like a legitimate concern for an already stablished site to me, although they sometimes push it too hard.
And then there's the Arduino site, where the concerns seem to be very different from those in EE. After reading Arduino meta, my feeling is (correct me if I'm wrong, please) that the two main concerns here are "graduating from beta" and "attract and being friendly to users that might not have any experience in electronics and/or coding, and who get bashed in EE and/or SO". Both concerns seem perfectly legitimate to me, but do they lead to be excessively tolerant of poor questions/answers?
Maybe this is not the right time to be worrying about valuable contributors flying away out of frustration with poor questions/answers by new users that shot their questions, take their answers and run to never come back once they got what they want (often leaving unaccepted answers behind). Or is it? Is the desire to graduate from beta allowing too many poor questions/answers go through, and ultimately hurting the graduation of the site by silently driving away valuable contributors? What do you think?

It depends on what the aim is of the SE. On Arduino.SE we aim to help anyone interested in developing/discovering Arduino. These people, very often are beginners. Once you go professional on microcontrollers, you'll most likely not use Arduino and even place your questions on EE.SE

I agree with you. However, there are begginers that ask good questions and some that don't (maybe just because they don't plan to be around for too long). Should those two kinds of begginers be treated equal?

As someone who has to respond to flagged questions (for moderation) I can say that I don't personally let a bad question through in the hope that the site comes out of Beta. I don't know exactly what criteria Stack Exchange uses  for graduating a site, but I think there is an element of "does the site look viable?".
The thing is, Arduino is a beginners' platform, although some users such as Petri Häkkinen are highly sophisticated.
I think that EE.SE can be a bit harsh on beginner questions, but perhaps that is the culture that they want, as you observed.
The overall thrust of Stack Exchange in general is to be a helpful site for many disciplines (eg. cooking, aviation, parenting, English) and there must necessarily be different levels of sophistication of questions and answers.
I've done a few "reference questions" personally in the hope that beginners will read those before posting a question that is readily answered already, but that hope is not always met. Perhaps part of being a newbie is that you are also new to the culture of finding answers for yourself.
Meanwhile Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange might legitimately argue that they expect people to ask "engineering level" questions and not 7th year high-school questions. If that is their attitude then I think they are shutting themselves off from helping people who might be capable of learning and contributing in the future (eg. budding electronics enthusiasts) but that is their call.
I also moderate on the Arduino Forum where a lot of the questions are of a similar nature to the ones here, that is, beginner questions. It's the nature of a product that is marketed to schools as an introduction to electronics and microncontrollers.

The problems with Arduino.SE are:

A lot of users that only ask questions (of varying quality)
Most (new) users have little experience with programming/hardware
Embedded Systems experts aren't specifically drawn to the Arduino environment. And can also get around on EE.SE

I think these problems simply wouldn't be there if this would be something like "Embedded Systems SE". That would draw much more professionals, being able to post questions on other hardware as PIC/ARM microcontrollers etc.

But I agree, a lot of questions are not really of high quality. But I'm not sure if "high quality arduino questions" would draw attention of more serious/knowledgable professionals/hobbyists. Since it will still be limited to the scope of Arduino (and thus be focussed on very basic development and deployment).
It may indeed help with people staying around, looking at other questions and even attempt to answer them.
But how can we do this? Should we close every low quality question (possibly have that person create a new question). Can we actually keep up with all the questions? (since there currently are way many more beginners as professionals, that will have to take the time to also moderate). Do we have to start saying: "Read the manual" and vote to close on every question that is at least a little obvious?
Should we even do this? Arduino is a platform aimed at beginners, "Fritzing" is possibly the most used tool for designing Arduino-electronic projects. But if you try posting a Fritzing schematic (or especially board view) on EE.SE, you're going to get shit thrown at you :)
But that's because EE.SE tends to aim at professionals (to keep them there).

Theoretically, I think that "Embedded Systems SE" would've been nicer for both newcomers and experienced people, since it wouldn't have hyped (which is probably also why it didn't get through beta).


text:
Encouraging Better Questions: Adding Specific Points to "How to Ask" Box
Our current "How to ask" box reads:

How To Ask
  Is your question about Arduino?
  We prefer questions that can be answered, not just discussed.
  Provide details. Share your research.
  If your question is about this website, ask it on meta instead.
visit the help center »
asking help »

It provides only general guidelines, as does the "asking help" page to which it links. (That page says, e.g., "be specific" without providing much guidance on how to be specific.)
The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition indicates that novices will not be able to well follow general advice and guidelines and instead should be presented with specific things to do; as they increase in expertise they will then be able to start applying more abstract rules and guidelines.
In answering my first couple of dozen questions on this site I've seen some particular recurring patterns with simple fixes, such as poorly formatted code and lack of background information, that made answers more difficult and time-consuming for me. I believe these problems could be mitigated by providing some much more specific direction to novices asking questions. Further, I think that in the course of following this advice novices might be lead to do a bit more research that would make there questions better, though I admit that might be more hopeful thinking than reality.
Should we add more specific advice aimed complete novices and, if so, how should we do it?

You're assuming people read that information. It seems to me that no one ever does...

Oh, I totally feel your pain. (Actually, no I probably don't, really. I would guess I don't feel even 1% of your pain. I don't even know if I understand 1% of your pain.) Nonetheless, I'm willing to do further writing in the (possibly naïve) hope that this might help, if someone who has the power to change these things thinks it's worth the effort. If you think it's not, I'm willing to accept that, too. I've only been around a month or so, so it's hard for me to judge.

I propose we do the following:

Create a "Question Checklist" help page (hopefully with a better name) that provides a list of clear, simple and very specific actions that beginners can take to improve their questions. (See below for my initial go at this.)
Change the "How to ask box" to add, "Review the question checklist page before posting your question and ensure you've fixed all applicable issues."
Change the Asking page in the help center to say, at the top, "Before pressing the post button go through the question checklist page to see if there are any easy improvements from that list you can make. This will increase the chance of your question getting a response."

Here are some things I think should be on the checklist:

Have you been following a guide or other documentation? If so, provide a link to it.
Do you talk about a specific Arduino board? If so, provide a link to a product page for that board.
Do you have a specific device attached to your Arduino, such as a sensor or network interface? If so, provide a link to the datasheet for that device or the chip on it. If you can't find the datasheet, at least provide a link to a product page.
Are you calling code in a library? If so, include a link to the documentation for that library (perhaps one of these, perhaps something from elsewhere).
Have you included code in your post? If so, make sure that it's nicely formatted to be easily readable.
Do you have more than 20 lines of code in your post? If so, remove extra functionality that you can remove that still leaves the problem behind (i.e., the remaining code still demonstrates the problem you're having). Make sure you test your new, smaller code to confirm it still demonstrates the problem.

(The "nicely formatted" item needs improving; we should provide specific direction on how to run it through a code formatter.)

+1 I would add checkpoints about wiring (almost always needed) and powering (when it makes sense).


text:
Missing Favicon on Firefox
Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but
The Arduino icon no longer appears on https://arduino.stackexchange.com/ although it is on this Meta.
I am using Firefox on macOS, and this probably happened after an upgrade to 53.0.2.
All the other stackexchange.com sites I use are OK

Hmm sounds like a caching issue. Can you try it on another Mac with Firefox? My Windows 10 computer with Firefox worked perfectly.

I guess my problem is solved, and probably is caching, although who knows.
It continued for several days, despite restarting Firefox. In retrospect I should have cleared the cache.
After a couple of restarts it is now working this morning.

Please accept your answer, to indicatie that the problem has been solved.


text:
Voting to close a question, within a question, does not count towards your review total
Today I realized that if I am in a question and I vote to close it, for whatever reason (and I am not the first person to vote to close the question), it doesn't count towards my review count. That means that those close votes don't go towards your Custodian/Reviewer/Steward badge count.
In order for it to count towards your tally, the vote to close has to be from within the Close Votes within the review dashboard.
Is this correct or should it be changed?
It seems to me that peoples effort, to close bad posts as they see them, goes unrewarded. These peoples effort should not be disregarded.
Note: I am sure this is not isolated to Arduino and happens on all SE sites. I have searched SE meta but to no avail.

I'm still a little confused by "if I am in a question and I vote to close it" but I take it you mean arriving at the question from outside of a review queue.
If so, then yes, this is correct, and you're right, this is network-wide behavior. The intent of the Custodian, Reviewer and Steward badges is first to increase awareness that the review queues exist, and then encourage people to spend time there/reward those who choose to give back to the community in that particular way. They're not so much about the specific actions one can take from the queues, although there are other badges that cover some of those, like Vox Populi and Copy Editor.
The absence of a badge for closing questions is by design; it would result in many spurious close votes from people just trying to get shiny pieces of virtual metal. Closing questions isn't a primary feature here anyways; it's just something that was invented to assist in keeping things tidy while we work on the real goal: making the Internet a better place through Q&A.

wrote "I take it you mean arriving at the question from outside of a review queue." - Correct.


text:
As we get more advanced in our use of Arduinos in ever more complex ways, it would be good if the Arduino SE supported Tex
One user was kind enough to send me the list of SE sites that support MathJax (LaTex), and I see Arduino is not among them.
This means that when I learn something relevant on EE SE and want to use it on Arduino SE I have to reformat all the equations back to the basics.
I would like to request that Arduino SE add this capability.
Here is the list.  It sticks out like a sore thumb that Arduino is not among the dozens that can do it:
Which Stack Exchange sites use MathJax?

I agree with you.

https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/13/is-there-an-easy-way-to-enter-formulas-in-questions/2446#2446

https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1231/we-need-a-way-to-create-symbols-in-the-arduino-meta?rq=1

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/307586/need-help-calibrating-adc-input-using-a-voltage-divider - compare the same answer in https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/38845/how-can-i-seriously-calibrate-adc-voltage-readings-with-arduino-nano/38854#38854

I know that Tex itself is open source, but the packages they use may not be free, like LaTex and MathJax.  I just hope somebody gets off the dime and makes it so we are compatible with the EE SE.  They have a lot to offer us.  Sure, they argue more than we do, but that's because they had to endure 5 years of college to earn the title of Electrical Engineer.  And afterwards a lot of them have had decades of work experience.  It is a great SE.  And all I want is to be able to copy (with attribution, of course), some of their solutions over here without having to convert it to FORTRAN.  ;-)

I just successfully got LaTex to work on a WordPress site, and it was free.  I used a plug-in called LATEX2HTML - same syntax as on the EE SE.  You can see it in action at http://www.sdsolarblog.com


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Pah! Don't you just hate these fly-by-night mavericks?

INTEL DISCONTINUES JOULE, GALILEO, AND EDISON PRODUCT LINES
Reposted from Hackaday
Sometimes the end of a product’s production run is surrounded by publicity, a mix of a party atmosphere celebrating its impact either good or bad, and perhaps a tinge of regret at its passing. Think of the last rear-engined Volkswagens rolling off their South American production lines for an example.
Then again, there are the products that die with a whimper, their passing marked only by a barely visible press release in an obscure corner of the Internet. Such as this week’s discontinuances from Intel, in a series of PDFs lodged on a document management server announcing the end of their Galileo (PDF), Joule (PDF), and Edison (PDF) lines. The documents in turn set out a timetable for each of the boards, for now they are still available but the last will have shipped by the end of 2017.
It’s important to remember that this does not mark the end of the semiconductor giant’s forray into the world of IoT development boards, there is no announcement of the demise of their Curie chip, as found in the Arduino 101. But it does mark an ignominious end to their efforts over the past few years in bringing the full power of their x86 platforms to this particular market, the Curie is an extremely limited device in comparison to those being discontinued.
Will the departure of these products affect our community, other than those who have already invested in them? It’s true to say that they haven’t made the impression Intel might have hoped, over the years only a sprinkling of projects featuring them have come our way compared to the flood featuring an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. They do seem to have found a niche though where there is a necessity for raw computing power rather than a simple microcontroller, so perhaps some of the legion of similarly powerful ARM boards will plug that gap.
So where did Intel get it wrong, how did what were on the face of it such promising products fizzle out in such a disappointing manner? Was the software support not up to scratch, were they too difficult to code for, or were they simply not competitively priced in a world of dirt-cheap boards from China?

So it's goodbye from Intel then. I just knew they didn't have any real staying power. Another "We'll have a slice of that cake, thank you very much. Oh, we don't have a clue what we're doing with it. What's cake?"
If you read the comments under the original posting you'll see the main consensus is that it's Intel's abysmal documentation (i.e., none unless you are buying $10bn worth of chips from them a year) that was the main cause of their failure.

Que lastima... lol.

Intel strategy leaves much room for... "surprises"... at present, to say the least [along with an enormous euphemism].


text:
Congratulations, Arduino SE is graduating!
It's been a long road (over 1200 days, and that's just counting this most recent attempt at building an Arduino community), but I have good news:
Arduino Stack Exchange is graduating!
Congratulations to all who participated, especially the moderators and regular users who gave so much of their time and effort. Reaching "mature community" status is a big milestone, and you should be very proud.
After you graduate, there will be some changes around here. Graduation works in two phases. The first phase starts now, and includes the following benefits:

You will no longer see the "beta" label attached to your site's name.
You will become eligible for question migration paths to/from the rest of the network.
You will be able to participate in the next round of community ads. There'll be a separate post here on meta soon about setting those up; if you don't know what community ads are, check out an example of how they'll work over on Code Golf SE.
You get to enter the line for a community moderator election. Based on the number of other sites waiting, your election should happen in August.

Later, the site will still receive a full custom design from one of our staff designers, which will be packaged with an increase in the amount of reputation needed to access each privilege. It's no secret that our backlog for site designs is long, so instead of making you wait to receive all the parts of graduation at once, we wanted to give you the things we could give you now. We think we've hammered out most of the bugs in the process, but there are still likely to be some left. If you come across anything out of place, please report it on Meta Stack Exchange using the [graduating-sites] tag.
This community has reached this point because of your generous contributions. Together, you've created a valuable resource that helps a lot of people, including many who never type a word of their own on the site. Congratulations again on all you've accomplished!

:-) Great Job, guys!

About time! Thanks to all who made possible!!

Switch is flipped, y'all are full on graduated now.

Indeed! Congrats from the Electrical Engineering SE :) I was wondering why it took so long lol. Maybe question migration will be easier for the both of us ;)


text:
Arduino.SE graduation: will users lose privileges?
Arduino.SE is graduating. Woohoo!
When a site graduates the reputation required to earn certain privileges eventually rises. My question is: will users lose privileges earned under beta rep thresholds, as their rep will be below the new thresholds? Are earned privileges kept after graduation?

This is what happens when you make an overly narrow site for a subcategory of questions which belong on EESE.

@ChrisStratton - this is what happens when a site graduates. You have this "problem" whether or not it is an "overly narrow site" (as you put it). See here and here. Trying to tie this to the sort of questions that might be asked on EE.SE is just a long and irrelevant bow.

No, Nick, the specific issue is cause by graduating with too small a user community which is in turn caused by having a site with too narrow a mission.  This is beyond obvious to anyone willing to take an honest look - which no doubt will be hard to those who've become caught up in this ill-conceived project to arbitrarily split off a small portion of EESE topics.

Privileges do not exist independently of reputation. If your current reputation is below the level that is currently required to perform an action, then you cannot perform that action.
So yes, some privileges will be lost.  But not soon. As the announcement  says:

Later, the site will still receive a full custom design from one of our staff designers, which will be packaged with an increase in the amount of reputation needed to access each privilege.

Custom designs take a long time to arrive. There are 8 graduated sites waiting for designs already, and no custom designs shipped so far in 2017, so... there's a good chance that by the time this happens, your reputation will be high enough so you can still close, edit, etc.

Yes, I believe that the "full site" privileges will apply once we get the site design (which as Alex said could well be months away).
For reference, here is the current privileges list. Compare to the numbers for a full site such as Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange.
There are 29 users today who would have access to "edit questions and answers" (2000 rep).
One of the reasons why we took a while to graduate was that, in January 2016, the Stack Exchange people noticed that we had very few people with enough privileges to do things like editing.
In the meantime, before we get our site design done, we all have time to increase our reputation. I notice that quite a few people have quite healthy rep levels, even though they only joined around 6 months ago. You could probably expect those to double in the next 6 months.

Later, the site will still receive a full custom design ...

The word "later" is pretty open. We may well have a year to bump up privileges before the new levels are activated.

Maybe the SE people are concerned about not having enough people with editing privileges, but I'm far more concerned (qualitywise) about having only 16 users today able to close questions (3,000 rep).

Yes, but since the rep changes are likely to be 6 months away, there are a number of people (like you) who could double their rep in that time, and reach that threshold. All SE sites which graduate are likely to have similar issues, and they seem to have survived.

This is fundamentally a demonstration of why Arduino should never have been a distinct site.  The pool of expertise to provide good answers, and the pool of high-rep users already exists on EESE; by creating an Arduino site, questions get shifted to disfunctional backwater and certain notorious curmudgeons on EESE get a migration option / closure excuse they've developed an impressive track record of abusing.

Perhaps the "notorious curmudgeons" are why people prefer to post here? Arduino is targetted at beginners, some people on EE.SE don't seem to be able to accept that fact.

Example of a similar thing: English Language Learners Stack Exchange vs. English Language and Usage Stack Exchange.

@NickGammon Stack Exchange rules are Stack Exchange rules - same here as on EESE.  Arduino is not only about beginners, and beginners use many things other than Arduino, so the association is illogical, and counterproductive as it artificially divides similar questions which should be being handled together.

For people concerned about the reputation/privileges issue I'd like to make a suggestion: Make a little more effort to upvote good answers. A big problem I see with this Stack Exchange is that generally the people asking questions have no interest in accepting answers or upvoting. The main way for people to gain reputation here is upvotes from the regulars.


text:
Does Arduino support embedded YouTube videos?
Over on Meta Stack Exchange, I am attempting to compile a complete list of Stack Exchange sites which support YouTube embedding.
Searching on Arduino Meta, I was unable to find any discussion of whether embedded YouTube videos are supported. Because YouTube embedding is not shown in the markdown preview window, there's no way to test without posting publically.
Are embedded YouTube videos supported on Arduino?

There's only one way to find out.
Testing YouTube URL Embedding
Regular https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8

Timestamped https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8&t=22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8&t=22

Shortened https://youtu.be/gocwRvLhDf8
https://youtu.be/gocwRvLhDf8

/Embed https://www.youtube.com/embed/gocwRvLhDf8
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gocwRvLhDf8

Embedded HTML <iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gocwRvLhDf8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Mobile https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gocwRvLhDf8

Flash Player https://www.youtube.com/v/gocwRvLhDf8
https://www.youtube.com/v/gocwRvLhDf8

YouTube TV https://www.youtube.com/tv#/watch/video/idle?v=gocwRvLhDf8
https://www.youtube.com/tv#/watch/video/idle?v=gocwRvLhDf8

See Which sites have YouTube embedding on?

What, no RickRoll?


text:
Lots of views in one day
I noticed that this question (Burning Arduinos one after another) got almost 4K views in one day. That seems odd since the average on arduino.se seems to be about 25 (guestimate). Is this view count correct?

It was probably a HNQ (Hot Network Question) - see the side bar that appears on everyone's page. If the question looks interesting it will draw in a lot of views. I can even imagine that the title "Burning Arduinos one after another" might have got people interested.

I didn't think of that. That makes sense.


text:
2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection
Arduino Stack Exchange is scheduled for an election next week, August 14th.In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates.  This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation.  Participation is completely voluntary.

The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Here's how it'll work:

Until the nomination phase, (so, until Monday, August 14th at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.
We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.
If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.
This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into at currently.
At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions.
Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.
This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

In your opinion, what do moderators do?
A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? What's the minimum standard required?
I think the minimun for programing is: You must able to download and install a IDE, write, compile and correctly run the Fizz Buzz test (with output thru Serial Monitor). This test doesn't require any electric skill.
For electrical: You must know Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Law (KCL, KVL). You must be able to calculate voltage and current in simple circuits with resistors, leds and buttons. You must understand serial and parallel connections.
[EDIT: irrelevant disgression deleted]

This is really a general Meta question - not one for moderators. Moderators resolve issues like spam or abuse, where things happen that fall outside the normal voting tools available to all trusted users. I would not expect a moderator to close a question because the user doesn't have enough knowledge. I would expect the general community to possibly do that by down-voting or voting-to-close.

Hmmm - (referring to the thread in question) a question isn't really off-topic because it is full of logic errors. It's off-topic if it asks about (say) a Raspberry Pi. Can you reword this question to concentrate on the moderator aspect? For example: What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site?

I will keep my question as it is. I'm really interested in the candidates' opinion on the subject, even if it's not a direct part of their duties.

Fair enough! I'll post my suggested question as another one then, since I think the concept of two users flaming each other is a good one to ask about.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fix list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? Can we, for example, add tags from a list, like we do posting a question? Such alternative adds flexibility without compromising the current classification.

This thread is for questions to be asked of prospective moderators at the forthcoming moderator election. Asking if we can add tags from a list is not something that a prospective moderator could usefully answer. This is, quite simply, a question that can be posted here on Meta as a question in its own right. Questions for moderator candidates are things like "if (x) happened what would you do?" or "would you be available to moderate on weekends?" - that sort of thing.

@Nick There are moderators, elected, and "moderation tools", gained after 2K. That's confusing. You are right, I'm wrong. Anyway, I have never seen any of the candidates here, and I can't vote for people unknow to me. Where you, Majenko, CodeGorilla running for the post, I will happily cast a vote. I think I have nothing to do in this process.

Going to adapt this into something more inquisitive towards candidates as opposed to suggesting a change to the system directly.


text:
When to upvote an answer
What must be the rule for upvoting an answer?
Must I upvoted every good answer or only the best one in a question?
Must I upvoted a minimal correct answer even if trivial answer? I'm thinking about an answer like "use a pull-up resistor" that just solve the problem.
Must I upvote a correct answer in every question I look at?

I don't think there can be any fixed rule, you have to go with you gut.
Normally I wouldn't up vote all answers, because it neutralises the vote if you vote for them all, but sometimes all the answers are good and you have to.
Personally I would down vote the answer "use a pull up resistor".  It doesn't explain why and that's more important.  I come here to learn things, and if I can share what I know, an instruction to do something fixes the immediate problem but doesn't fix the long term problem.
BUT that's just my opinion and you should go with yours. :)

I like your criteria: "instruction to do something fixes the immediate problem but doesn't fix the long term problem"

Must I upvote every good answer or only the best one in a question?

You don't have to up-vote anything. You might do nothing if, for example, the question and answer are not in your area of expertise (eg. the ESP8266). Sometimes people ask questions about some device I know nothing about. Therefore I can't say if the answer is good or bad, so I move on without voting.
If there are two or more answers I would be tempted to up-vote the better one. Sometimes they are both good so I will up-vote both of them.

Must I upvote a correct answer in every question I look at?

No you don't. However remember how the reputation system works. Other users get reputation when you up-vote, and that helps them to get more tools to work with the site (like editing questions).
Up-voting also helps the person asking the question (they will probably choose the answer with the most up votes), and also others who look at the question later.

Down voting is useful if you think an answer is clearly wrong (or maybe doesn't even clearly answer the question). In those cases you can also add a comment (although you are not required to) explaining why you think the answer is wrong. These comments can help other people understand why an answer has down votes.

For really bad answers (like spam, or abuse) you can flag them for moderator attention. However don't flag answers that are just wrong, voting down is the correct approach there.

Help Center left things unexplained, like what "flag" means. I thought "flag" is something you do when you don't have the "close" option due low reputation. In the Help Center main page there is no "flag" entry. Now I know.


text:
3 Total posts awaiting review
In my status bar on Arduino stackexchange (not meta) I see in the top bar a square, brown with 3 in it and hovering shows: 3 total posts awaiting review.
However, if I look in the review list, all reviews show 0 items (including from meta data).
Where can I find these 3 posts?
I see this since I just got over 2,000 reputation.

That used to happen to me too. There is some explanation along the lines that you recently reviewed something so it is dropped from the list, but the count on the top bar is a cached one.
See:

Queue counts inconsistent?
Review counts in top-bar and /review don't match
Answer for Notify users of possible reviews on toolbar


text:
How to contribute information (we need a FAQ or wiki)
By accident I found this excelent post by Edgar Bonet, How can I handle the millis() rollover?. That is not exactly a question, rather a tutorial in a question/answer format (his words).
This valuable information is lost among thousand of other questions. I think we need a FAQ or wiki to put this information, to better server our charter.
Second, Is it an acceptable format for posting original/curated material?

I have done similar questions, such as How do you use SPI on an Arduino?. It is certainly OK to post a question and answer it yourself.
The intent of Stack Exchange in general is to become a repository of useful questions and answers. Sometimes a single person will do both the question and answer, and at other times one person will ask a very interesting question, and another person will do an excellent answer.
This site is therefore working as intended. Unfortunately sometimes good questions are swamped by poor ones, but the really poor questions should be closed (by community voting), leaving behind the good ones.


text:
Are we a little stingy about upvoting questions?
I felt like questions with accepted answers were upvoted less often here than on other SE sites, so I decided to have a look at the Data Explorer:
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where Score > 0 and CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --35
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --116

So, about 30% of questions with accepted answers were upvoted recently. I compared this with some of my other SE sites.
Here's Electrical Engineering SE:
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where Score > 0 and CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --359
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --748

which is about 48%.
Here's Science Fiction and Fantasy SE:
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where Score > 0 and CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --378
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --391

which is 97%.
Here's StackOverflow:
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where Score > 0 and CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --31594
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --85569

which is 37%.
Here's Data Science SE:
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where Score > 0 and CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --40
select count(distinct Id) from Posts where CreationDate > '2017-07-01' and AcceptedAnswerId is not null; --75

which is about 53%.
So, we're a little bit on the low side. I wonder why this is?
I'm a noob here myself, but I'd like to see more activity in the Arduino SE.  I just figure that if a question is good enough to be left open and receive an answer, with the OP active and polite enough to accept the answer, then in most cases giving the OP a little encouragement with an upvote on the question would help to encourage more participation.
Also, this was a good excuse to play with the Data Explorer :)

Do you have a link to the Data Explorer that you could share? Thanks in advance.

@sa_leinad Sure https://data.stackexchange.com/

This isn't necessarily a bad thing - consider for example IoT SE, where no matter how bad a question is or irrelevant to what was asked an "answer" is, it will get several upvotes.

@ChrisStratton I see your point

Great use of the Data Explorer!

I've noticed that, in general, reputation creeps up fairly slowly here, compared to some other sites. I've got a lot more reputation for a handful of answers elsewhere (eg. English Learners SE) than I do for the same number of answers here. Quite often an answer isn't upvoted at all.
I think this is partly because of a mentality of:

I have a problem in my code, I'll ask here on Arduino SE
I've got my answer, kthxbye!

A while ago I was posting comments under answers along the lines of:

If this helped you please up-vote it, and even accept the answer. This helps others know that the answer works.

You can help too by up-voting answers when you see them pop up (if you think they deserve it). I look for questions that Community (the system) has brought back to the first page, because no-one has accepted the answer, or voted for it. If the answer looks helpful, I vote it up. This helps stop old questions bobbing up all the time, and also helps other users know that someone thought the answer was OK.
It also helps give the person who answered some rep, which will help them get more privileges from Stack Exchange (like being able to delete answers, etc.)

I 100% agree with everything you said here but I would like to point out that the topic was about upvoting questions rather than answers.

Oops! slaps self

I think good/correct answers not being accepted is a bigger problem, because it left lot of questions as *unanswered", which not true. I don't see how upvoting a question serve any purpose at all, because how many up-votes a question got it's not a criteria for anything.

"I don't see how upvoting a question serve any purpose at all". @Look Alterno, reputation points bestow privileges that allow users to more effectively participate in improving content. If someone is consistently asking good questions then they would likely also do a good job of reviewing other user's questions. Getting that sort of user up to the reputation points required for these privileges certainly has the potential to benefit Arduino Stack Exchange.

how many up-votes a question got it's not a criteria for anything - it is, though. Say you do a search for "working" and sort by votes, then the most up-voted question appears at the top. So, out of a set of questions which might ask similar things, the most up-voted question can be selected as the best question "of this sort". This can help you select the "best" question which might ask something you want to know, which also hopefully will have good answers.

@Nick Different people have different search habits. I search with Google, not inside Arduino.SE, so I don't see upvotes. And, like many, I only look at first page results.

Regardless of your search habits, the up-votes have a meaning on the site. That was my point.

I think one factor is that we simply get a higher percentage of low quality questions here that are unclear, don't provide enough information, or are poorly formatted. We may eventually badger the author or edit enough to make the question upvote worthy in the end but by that point I don't feel the need to reward the author.
I suppose a better approach would be to simply evaluate the question as-is without regard for the history.
I do think this makes it even more important to upvote the high quality questions we do get.

Regarding that, some people on this site rarely ask questions, but usually answer them. For example, Majenko, who has the highest rep currently, has answered 1,795 questions! But he has asked no questions! You (per1234) have asked no questions. So voting your questions up isn't going to encourage you. :)

Low quality questions often don't get great answers, and even when they do, may not attract future visitors who benefit from and upvote those  answers.

I have to confess I often upvote the question I answered, even if I don't like it that much. Every upvote helps a question hit the HNQ list, which means every answer to it will earn much more reputation that it would otherwise. I know it's pretty much rep chasing (frankly, I don't like HNQ), but those are the rules which are set, and if someone doesn't use them for their advantage, it's their loss.

Every community creates its microculture influenced by a handful of alpha users who tend to develop a clique and impose a standard of behavior and quality evaluation.
Arduino community doesnt seem as humble and nurturing as most SE communities.  One user, for example, compares arduino users to stubborn, ignorant horses in his personal description.
IMO, every answer should AUTOMATICALLY award an irreversible upvote to the question it answers.

It bothers me too that there aren't enough upvotes on Arduino SE. I am yet to come up with a good solution. One thing that doesn't work in our favour is that we have so many new users every day who ask their question, get an answer and then never stick around to pay it forward. And because they are in and out they don't read/learn the guides that SE is founded on, resulting often in poor questions. The users who do stick around are great. But we all could put more effort into upvoting (me included). You are right in that we can change the culture by leading by example.

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


text:
2017 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire
In connection with the moderator elections, we are holding a Q&A thread for the candidates. Questions collected from an earlier thread have been compiled into this one, which shall now serve as the space for the candidates to provide their answers.
Due to the submission count, we have selected all provided questions as well as two of our back up questions for a total of 10 questions.
As a candidate, your job is simple - post an answer to this question, citing each of the questions and then post your answer to each question given in that same answer. For your convenience, I will include all of the questions in quote format with a break in between each, suitable for you to insert your answers. Just copy the whole thing after the first set of three dashes. Please consider putting your name at the top of your post so that readers will know who you are before they finish reading everything you have written, and also including a link to your answer on your nomination post.
Once all the answers have been compiled, this will serve as a transcript for voters to view the thoughts of their candidates, and will be appropriately linked in the Election page.
Good luck to all of the candidates!
Oh, and when you've completed your answer, please provide a link to it after this blurb here, before that set of three dashes. Please leave the list of links in the order of submission.
To save scrolling here are links to the submissions from each candidate (in order of submission):

Nick Gammon
Avamander
Anonymous Penguin
jose can u c
Majenko

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?
A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?
A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?
How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?
Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?
What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?
What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.
In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
In your opinion, what do moderators do?

I'm Nick Gammon. My nomination for moderator is here.

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

This is a tricky one. It happens quite a bit, believe me. If the question shows some attempts to involve the Arduino (not just mentioning the word), like a schematic and/or a sketch, then I would probably dismiss the flag. A bit also depends on whether it has got good answers by the time I see the flag.

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

There is a Meta Stack Exchange post about that. From that page "Comments are disposable: unlike posts, there's no revision history, and they can be deleted without warning by their authors, by moderators, and in response to flags.".
The post When should comments be used clarifies that comments under questions are to:

Request clarification from the author;
Leave constructive criticism that guides the author in improving the post;
Add relevant but minor or transient information to a post (e.g. a link to a related question, or an alert to the author that the question has been updated).

Therefore I would point out to the person complaining that comments under questions are not for attempting to answer the question.

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

Arduino Stack Exchange is different from sites like Cooking, where you can usually answer without having to have an off-site link. I would look at the link and see if the linked site has information that could be usefully copied into the answer, thus making the answer more useful if the site goes down. For things like datasheets, perhaps I might suggest that the answer be modified to provide a way of finding the datasheet without giving a literal link. For example: "Go to atmel.com and use the search function to find the datasheet". (And even that isn't a great answer, because it is like saying "Google it").

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

If necessary I would remind them of the Stack Exchange Be Nice policy. These flags can be a bit subjective - sometimes new users take offence at being asked to write a better question. If I thought that the flag wasn't warranted I would dismiss it.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

If I felt strongly enough about it, I would contact the other moderator through the private moderators' chat room. Between us we would come to an agreement about whether to let things stand, or change them.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?

The "in need of moderator attention" flag allows for a reason to be typed, so I don't see any reason to add more reasons. Too many reasons and it is hard to choose which one applies.

What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?

The Arduino is a beginners' platform - it was designed to be a low-cost introduction to computing and electronics in school. Thus I personally cut people a bit of slack if they seem to only have beginner knowledge. However if a question is more like "do my homework for me" then I am less tolerant of them. As a moderator I would allow the community to vote a question down if they thought it showed insufficient research - we don't need moderators to do that.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

I would remind them of the Stack Exchange Be Nice policy. If the comments are just trading insults I would delete all of the insults (from both parties). Possibly if a comment had a combination of insult and useful information I would delete the insult part.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

It lets me intervene in the (rare) occasions when moderators are needed like a flame war. It also lets me more quickly deal with really egregious posts (such as spam) which I might notice when activity here is low, without having to wait for other people to also flag something for deletion.
It also lets me handle unusual situations like lock posts, protect posts, roll back unsuitable edits, and things like that.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

The Stack Exchange Theory of Moderation explains quite well what moderators are for. They are there to handle exceptional situations. The normal voting rights that privileged users get are normally enough to handle most situations.
Moderators are there for those odd cases where normal user voting is insufficient, or perhaps would not take place quickly enough.

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

It's most likely a duplicate anway, so the system would take care of it. If it is technical and the question is applicable to any microcontroller then I may well migrate it to EE.

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

Tell them to post the information as an answer. If it's really that valuable they will take the time to do it.

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

Probably let it stand in that instance, however the question that elicited such an answer is another matter...

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

You mean me? ;)
Probably take the side of the person with the higher rep. We gotta have each others' backs...

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

If the question is that valid it will probably be asked again. Or the user will whine. Either way nature will take its course.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?
  What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?

The system is tried and tested and has enough flexibility in it already. I have suggested other close reasons before in another thread, but can see no benefit in changing the underlying methodology.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

You're talking about me again, aren't you?
I'd probably move the discussion to chat and leave them to it in private. The rest of the world doesn't need to watch them.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Faster deletion of spam. That's my pet hate, and there seems to be a major influx of it recently.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Rule with an iron hand wearing kid leather gloves.

Faster deletion of spam - oddly enough I don't see much spam. Maybe it's a time zone thing. The automated system of spam deletion seems to work OK usually. I do see some spam, but it usually has about 4 down-votes before I get to it, and would probably be deleted 15 minutes later anyway.

15 minutes in an eternity for spam. 15 seconds is too long even. Spam must die. Instantly. According to the spam everyone wants to watch boxing whilst listening to Jay-Z. Neither of which interest me in the slightest.

Whilst I agree with you about spam, unless you are on the site 24/7 and actively monitoring it for spam, deletion of spam is something the community does effectively rather than individual moderators.

@NickGammon Alas I can only manage 18/7...

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

Most of these types of questions, although they might also be a good fit for Electrical Engineering, should stay on Arduino as long as they are related directly to Arduino. The transistor question probably would stay since knowing the current and voltage characteristics of an Arduino are essential to answering the question.
On the other hand, if the question was about the thermal characters of a transistor that just happened to be connected to an Arduino, we could consider moving that question to Electrical Engineering. Likewise, if a question asks about the specifics of the syntax for a for loop, we could consider migrating that question to Stack Overflow.

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

First of all: even with 20-30 comments, there are still a lot of "discussion" comments that don't really add much value. Since I always read the comments before migrating them to chat, I can go back and undelete the comments that are useful for everyone to see.
If someone did become upset at me because of migrating comments to chat, I would consider figuring out a better way to get the information added to the post that they feel is missing. I might also explain to the user the reasoning for why comments are moved from chat, and back up what I say with links to Meta Stack Exchange.

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

If the question is well phrased and is asking for a link, there's no reason not to answer with a link. I've deleted plenty of link-only-answers that do not provide sufficient explanation, but I pretty much leave library questions alone, although I may comment and ask the poster to edit to include a basic example, etc.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

If they're acting rudely, I will talk to them and tell them that their behavior isn't okay. As with any time a user is rude/mean, it's good to be a little lenient as people who are very knowledgable are often very passionate about their work. But, I will not let a user create an unwelcoming environment just because they are knowledgeable.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

Privately contact them. There's often info you may not know about the situation, or the other mod may provide a different viewpoint on the matter. I would hope that any other mod would be open to take constructive criticism and openly talk about matters.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?

Pretty happy with what we already have here already, but I would be open to change if anyone else had any ideas. Don't have a lot of input here mostly because I, as one of the "pro-tempore" mods for Arduino Stack Exchange, try not to interfere with the natural process of voting to close a post. A mod can close/open a question with a single vote, so I step in when needed, but let the community handle most of the close voting.

What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?

Sometimes users need a little more guidance than others, but that's no reason to push someone away. Be nice and patient. If they still aren't getting it, maybe suggest some reading materials/etc. so they can improve their understanding of Arduino. We were all beginners once.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

Again, it's an expectation that users need to be nice. If they aren't, they need to be talked to. In the case that a stern warning doesn't work for either one or both, a short term suspension might have to be considered, after talking with the other moderators about the issue and trying alternative solutions to resolve any underlying issues and to help neutralize the situation.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

Handle flags, settle disputes, be a public figure for the community, and plan and propose new things to help build and expand Arduino Stack Exchange. All of those things are very difficult (if not impossible) to do with 20K rep. A moderator has more of a higher-level role than 20K rep users. Although they are just as important, high rep users work more with closing questions and handling the review queues.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

Be a flight attendant. I know it sounds silly, but it's a fairly good analogy:

Both are forced to put on a smile, even when they don't want to.
Both deal with angry customers/users.
Both are responsible for the general wellbeing of the customers/users.
Both have a lot of obscure, small jobs behind-the-scenes that most people don't know about.
Both hand out free mini bags of peanuts and pretzels.

Nice analogy about being a flight attendant. :)

My name is Avamander. You can find my nomination post here.

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

I know what the intention is by asking this question from me, these questions are interesting to solve as it's hard to say what exactly counts as an Arduino. But in this case, that specific question is Arduino specific. The transistor is an important part, but not what turns motors on by itself. I would dismiss the flags, comment why it's Arduino specific and also mention to use up- and down-votes if people think the question is bad because that's another topic.

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

If the comments are important to solving the issue I would possibly keep them there because it does cause confusion when some key detail is only in chat. Moving to chat should happen if there's really a lot of discussion  going on maybe not directly related to solving the question. But if I already have moved the discussion I would probably respond that I'll keep that in mind for the next time but this time solve the issue in chat. Chat opening on hover would also help, but that's not in my power to add.

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

I would close the question, for two reasons, answers are all going to be a link-only (with no good solution) and the datasheet is not hard to find. Google in this case will always have a better result and maintaining such question is just a waste of time.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

Amount of answers is irrelevant, one good and one bad doesn't equal 0. I would warn if the amount of arguments gets too high (assuming nothing banal or offensive though), delete after it isn't toned down or when it's flagged by someone else and lastly warn the user(s) privately if it might be needed.

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

I use the moderation chat and discuss. Maybe there's something I don't know about the question or the asker.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?

The current system is good, it allows one to add their own reason. One small improvement that could be made is a button in "Reopen" queue to let the user know they're on the right path with their edits, possibly just adds a comment.

What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?

I don't demand anything, this is Arduino SE, people have usually just started with electronics and programming. Maybe only knowing how to use Arduino IDE and being literate would suffice.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

As I am not omniscient, it is quite likely I can't determine and even shouldn't be determining which of the users is right. I would possibly convert the discussion to chat, tell them to discuss calmly (and without insults there if there were any), if that's not possible (knowing user's history), a warning and deletion of the comments.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

10k or even 20k reputation is hard to achieve with retention being as low as it is. Main benefit would be for example the ability to retract edits, quickly deleting spam and doing other more dangerous tasks like migration/deletion/conversions.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

As much as needed, as little as possible. A moderator should use moderation tools only for things that are exceptional.

Question 7. A guy asks how to get 24V from two 12V car batteries. He misunderstand the answers and connect positive and negative from the same battery. The spark let him blind. What do you think is the etical/legal responsability of the answer's poster?

@LookAlterno Moot since that question would get closed for not being about Arduino ;-)

@josecanuc It actually happened. Have a look: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/43104/how-to-merge-2-batteries-socketof-6v-each/43105

@LookAlterno There isn't any responsibility on the answer's poster. It's entirely on the users on this site to determine if the answers are correct or not and if it's safe to follow them, there isn't a good way to make sure noone makes any mistakes and this issue isn't limited to Arduino SE.

Your opinion. Lawyers can still sue the poster, because ... reasons.

@LookAlterno Terms of service say "Subscriber also certifies that they are legally permitted to use the Services and access the Network, and takes full responsibility for the selection and use of the Services and access of the Network." and you know what that means. It's like trying to sue google for a search result being wrong, well, you can, but you probably won't win.

Justice cost money. How much Justice can buy your money?

I am satisfied with your answers and comments. Now I know what your position is on the subject. This is not the place to discuss the merits of the alternatives, but be informed of the candidates' positions.

I'm glad I could help. :D

A question is flagged as "off-topic" because it only peripherally involves an Arduino. For example "How do I get my Arduino to turn on a motor using a transistor?". Should it be closed altogether, migrated to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange (where they are used to questions about transistors), or left here as a good beginner's Arduino question? Alternatively would you dismiss the flag and let the community handle the question via down-votes or vote-to-close?

Many users come here as wee beginners, looking for help on a specific project that may involve Arduino as they progress. I would be more inclined to dismiss the "off-topic" flag if the question looks like it may lead that user to continue their project on Arduino. However, if the question is more complex or advanced than a beginner's Arduino question, it's possible a better answer may be given by some other SE community.  Each of us were beginners at one time, and being pushed away may cause us to lose some great potential.

A question has a lengthy number of comments under it suggesting various possible solutions to the asked problem. Once the number of comments reaches 20 the system (Community) automatically flags it suggesting that the comments be moved to chat. You move the comments to chat as suggested, and then get a complaint from a user that "valuable information is now hidden away in chat rather than under the question where it should be". How do you respond?

If the information is truly valuable, it ought to be in an answer rather than a comment. Comments should be for "meta" discussion, to help the questioner ask the question better.

A question is flagged as "not an answer" because it basically only has a link in it. The question is "Where can I find the datasheet for the Atmega328P" and the answer is a link to the datasheet. There is a school of thought that link only answers are not good answers. However in this case there isn't really any other way of answering the question. Copying and pasting a huge datasheet into the answer isn't really an option. Also see Should I flag answers which contain only a link as “not an answer”?. As a moderator, would you delete the answer, or let it stand?

A link-only answer should at least have a brief summary of how it answers the question or of the actual answer in order to remain. The linked article/page might be more in-depth, as long as it pertains to the question. If it's just background material not specifically answering the question, it certainly doesn't belong as an answer.

How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?

The user should be encouraged to be helpful without including whatever tends to generate the negative flags. If the flags are coming from only one or two other users, it may be that it's an interpersonal conflict, in which case the users involved should be warned, and possibly blocked/banned for a specified time. I believe it's possible to provide valuable answers which do not provoke argument (vim/emacs notwithstanding).

How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

In general, I would defer to the other mod, unless it was clear that the action was intentionally aggressive or oppresive.

Regarding why something has to be flagged/closed, do you believe that the actual system (a fixed list of reasons) can be improved or changed for a better one? If you do, how do you propose it could be accomplished?

The current system of a fixed list, with option to free-type is sufficient.

What level of knowledge do you demand from users asking questions? Do you believe there's a minimum standard required?

As a community that gets many beginners, I don't expect a great deal. However, the basics ought to be the ability to recognize the most common passive components (resistor, capacitor, battery, LED, wires) as well as being able to recognize basic source code elements (#define, function declaration, loops/conditionals) in such a way that the answers provided can be understood and utilized by the questioner.

What would you do if two users start insulting each other about not having sufficient knowledge to post on this site? Assume that both users have flagged each other's comments as rude or abusive.

Initial warning to all parties, leading to temporary ban. Non-helpful answers/comments should be removed. Noting that an answer/comment is incorrect are fine, but personal attacks are not.

In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?

I can't say I view it that way. If there is a need for a moderator team, and I can help in that way, then good. There are a lot of good answers coming in, but the site/community becomes more effective with curation.

In your opinion, what do moderators do?

The moderator is there as a kind of filter, to keep useless bits from detracting from users getting excellent answers to their questions.


text:
2017 Community Moderator Election
The 2017 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page at
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/election
for more detail, and to participate!
If you have general questions about the election process, or questions for moderator candidates, feel free to ask them here on meta -- just make sure your questions are tagged election.


text:
Call to action! We need more moderator nominations!
The nomination phase of our moderator elections ended on Monday 21st. August 2017 at 20:00 UTC.
Note that Stack Exchange has a rule that there must be at least one more candidate than positions available (so there genuinely is an election).
When the nomination period finished we had 3 nominations for 3 positions, and therefore the election could not proceed (the 3 nominated people were not automatically elected).

Update
The nomination period was extended by 7 days to give other people a chance to nominate. It will now close at 20:00 UTC on Monday 28th. August 2017.

If you are one of the many users who post frequently, help clear the review queue, and have an interest in this site, please nominate as a moderator candidate. Who knows? You might be elected! You would join a small, friendly team of moderators who keep an eye on moderator flags. Moderators have their own chat room for private discussions. There is also a Stack Exchange chat room for moderators only from all sites, where issues can be discussed and resolved.
Moderation is not particularly onerous, unlike the higher-activity sites like Stack Overflow. You may only have to look at a few flags each day.

At the time of editing (Wednesday 23rd. August) we now have 4 nominations, however it would still be helpful to have more nominations. Nominating shows an interest in the site, and gives voters a wider range of choice when voting.

Beside Nick, I want to see Edgar Bonet, Code Gorilla or Majenko as moderators. I think they have the technical and personal skills for the job.

Was queuing up an announcement to discuss that we are, indeed, extending the election, but I think I'll just piggyback off of this as an official announcement: due to insufficient moderator count, the nomination period of the election has been extended by an extra 7 days.

I would be a terrible moderator. The delete button would be abused.

In case anyone is wondering, moderator actions are extensively logged. They don't have carte blanche to do whatever they like. :)


text:
2017 Community Moderator Election Results
Arduino's first moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 3 new moderators are:

They'll be replacing the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering, and share your assistance and advice with them as they learn the ropes!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the provisional and pro tem moderators for stepping into the role and guiding this community to it's first successful election. Great job everyone!
For details on how the voting played out, you can download the election results here, or view a summary report online.

Mwahaha!!! The power is mine!!!!  Cower, brief mortals!

Welcome to the team, Majenko! I'm sure your enthusiasm for answering questions will also translate into enthusiastic moderating. :)

Farewell to Avamander - you stepped into the Pro Tempore moderator position when we needed another couple of moderators, in January 2016, and filled the position with competence and grace. I hope we will continue to see you here as a contributor to Arduino Stack Exchange in general.

Thanks to everyone who voted for me. I hope to continue moderating in much the same way as I have in the past.

Finally, remember moderators are just people too, with their own interests in Arduino. You can always contact us in the Pin 13 chat room if there is something you want to discuss. If necessary we can set up a private chat room if there is something confidential you want to talk about.