text:
Can we get some canonical questions going?
For those who don't know what a canonical question is, view this blog post.
Anyway, can we brainstorm some ideas for ones? I feel like they could be a great addition to our community.
This question already talks about a canonical question for sending data via serial
However, what other topics could we do? Does anyone want to write one? I feel like we need someone to get the ball rolling and then we can let others edit it (as a community wiki).
The nice part about this is one person could start it and then others can help build it. As it grows, we can start closing duplicates that are covered in the canonical question. In addition, chat can be used to distribute the work between people by collaborating effectively.
Some topics ideas:

Uploading errors
Web servers (how to control [] with an Arduino [])
...whatever else you can think of.

To do this, ask a fairly broad question (that, of course, can't be closed as too broad), answer it yourself, and (optional) flag for a moderator to make the question CW.

I'm envisioning this post to serve as a sandbox for canonical posts (and later turn into a list of example questions for examples).

Can link be one of them?

I have been contacted a few times on how to use a custom/downloaded/user-space Arduino library in the Arduino IDE such that it can be used with:
#include <library.h>

One single question that describes the process, linked to from the library, would prove helpful to some people.

Serial communications with an additional 101 on the basics of serial communications. to reduce the need to have the base line problems asked repeatedly like not crossing TX and RX lines or no common earth.


text:
Where we are, how we can improve: what do *you* think about the quality of Arduino SE?
Averaging over 4K visits a day and a bit under 10 questions per day, we are getting great traffic.
However, now is a good time to talk about the quality of our site. Even if we had 100K visits a day, we still would need to have good quality and a good core group to help moderate the site.
A friendly reminder built in: this is your site that you moderate. Please, feel free to welcome new users, edit poorly formatted questions and answers, and just vote. In addition, look at your privileges that you are granted (based on your reputation). You have more power than you probably realize, so don't be afraid to talk on meta or review items in the review queues. Recently, not many users have been stepping up to these tasks, so make sure to do so or our site will never graduate.
Now, it's your turn to say what you think could be improved? Is our tagging system outdated? Negative tone? Chat rooms should be improved? I want to hear what you have to say!

For users not familiar with the term, "graduate" means becoming a proper Stack Exchange site. At the moment we're only in beta, which means we're not necessarily here to stay yet.

I think that our "answered percentage" is more than 72%, but we tend to use comments to answer some easy questions. This site is pretty useful and I learned a lot visiting it almost every day, but we should use more the answer box, correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree. I often see answers shortly posted as comments to the question, without providing further explanation. It is important that people try to answer and provide some more details about the roots of the problem instead of just mentioning "do that, it will work".

Perhaps some people post brief answers in comments because they don't feel it's up to the quality of a "real" answer, don't have time to discuss it in more detail, and yet don't want to leave things completely unanswered. I think it's fair, if you can expand on such an explanation, to create an answer based on that comment. If you have only a little to add, mark the answer "community wiki" so you don't appear to be unfairly taking credit for a small contribution and perhaps others will add more to it.

Will be a useful site for many.
Overlap with eg SE.EE is unavoidable but should be minimised as much as possible. Some questions are unavoidably Arduino-related but need people with reasonable EE understanding as well. These need to be on the Arduino site, but care should be taken not to let them suffer due to need for EE expertise.
Questions which are transferred between sites MUST be treated well.
Posters must be VERY clearly told what has been dome and why, and MUST be able to access and edit and work with their question after the transfer. If transferring a question to another site blocks access to some users you will lose people.
Stack Exchange is too often brutally unfriendly to newcomers. Arduino specifically includes utter electronics beginners in its target demographic. The site must make allowances for this.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Let's get critical: Feb 2015 Site Self-Evaluation
We all love Arduino Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.
The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter.
Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.
Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Final Results

Increasing payload size above 32 bytes using nRF24L01+

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Can I use the setup() function inside the loop() function

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

Serial debug output looking messy

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

5 Switches 1 AI pin

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

How to send Json to a webservice from pc/RPI with live data from Arduino(serial)

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

Audio Frequency White Noise generation using Arduino Mini Pro

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 3)

Get the distance to non perpendicular surface

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

Wake up atmel-328 with external interrupt.

Net Score: -4 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 4)

Servo motor swinging back to 0°

Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 5)

Read temperature (DS18B20) with the ATTiny85

Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 5)

Serial debug output looking messy: Satisfactory. A great answer but required obscure search terms.
How to send Json to a webservice from pc/RPI with live data from Arduino(serial): Skipped. It needs to be closed because it's off topic and cross posted with Stack Overflow. I chose not A lesson to learn here is that you should not recommend posting on other sites until after closing it or you should flag it to get migrated.
Can I use the setup() function inside the loop() function: Excellent. Third result (not the first above the fold) in Google and it had the best answers that I could find. The first one was Arduino documentation that was unrelated, a second one was the Arduino forum with incomplete answer(s), and the third one was us.
Get the distance to non perpendicular surface: Needs improvement. Hard to find, no good answers.
Audio Frequency White Noise generation using Arduino Mini Pro: Satisfactory. Shows up high in search rankings but the answer selection could be improved. [SEE POINT #1]
Servo motor swinging back to 0°: Needs improvement. No answer that fixes the OP's problem (in my opinion).
5 Switches 1 AI pin: Satisfactory. It directly answers the question, but is a bit hard to find. Could use some editing.
Increasing payload size above 32 bytes using nRF24L01+: Excellent. Highest in search rankings, good answer.
Wake up atmel-328 with external interrupt.: Needs improvement. This question didn't seem to have a quality answer posted.
Read temperature (DS18B20) with the ATTiny85: Needs improvement. This question didn't seem to have a question
What we can take away from this:

We need to do a better job editing new posts to make higher quality (which might help some with SEO).
We need to answer more questions (hard to really improve).
We need to close questions efficiently. This is just more of a close a post when you see an off topic post kind-of-thing.

+1 for performing the evaluation exactly as instructed. Nice going! I also agree with all points you propose. A good starting point would be for us to attend to the review queues, that are starting to pile up with review items.

@Ricardo yes they are, and I think skips are part of the issue. However, we should remind people about them definitely.

Wake up atmel-328 with external interrupt.: Needs improvement. - I had another look at that. I think the question is more-or-less unanswerable. There is no schematic, no code. The OP also mentions a "server" with no details about that. I'm going to close it as "too broad" - maybe the OP will clarify what it is all about.

Related:
Questions are being sent
EE -> Arduino and
Arduino -> EE
without adequate reason
and even yesterday
EE ->Arduino -> EE.
At least it got back to EE which it should never have left
BUT there are usually intelligent people who have a literally blind hatred for Arduinos  who go out of their way to make life hard for Arduino users and to abuse them and trash Arduinos generally.
The intended ethos of the SE sites is not well enough understood. In one recent example (last few days) a user double posted on two SE pages and somebody voted to close on one page where they had adequate rep and stated the question should be closed on both as punishment for double posting. That MAY have been an EE - Engineering crossover but the same ill will exists between EE & Arduino.
Better promulgation of the Stack Exchange treatment and behaviour rules' is in order.

I don't remember seeing many questions going from Arduino to EE. Do you have any specific examples that you feel were inappropriately migrated from here?

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


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Featured Questions
There is no section saying 'Featured Questions' in the 'Unanswered Questions Tab'.
How do I find those questions that have active bounties on them?

The "Featured" tab only appears if there are featured questions to show. Currently, I don't think we have any active bounties, which is why the tab isn't there.
Also, as far as I know, the tab appears on the main home page and under "Questions". It doesn't appear in the "Unanswered questions" section.

Now a featured question has come.


text:
Questions with no concrete answer?
Let's say I want to create a robot to follow a line, but make this as fast as possible.
Can I actually ask a question like: "How can I make a line following robot as fast as possible".
I would say that the question is way too broad, but what if I really were wondering this or wanted to discuss about it? And it's not really an answer which has a 'solution' but more a discussion/design question. Can this be asked on SE?
Should I:

Just ask the question, it's a good question?
Not bother SE people with design questions, just try it out yourself, if you get stuck, come back here.
Not bother SE people with design questions, just try it out yourself and ask a question if you have to further optimilize something like: "How to read sensors faster?"
Divide it in smaller/more basic (and probably design) questions: "Which motor is fastest (servo/DC)?", "How to make a fast (line-follow) robot chassis? (maybe not for arduino SE)" and "How to use 'PID' controlling in arduino"
Do more research before asking said question

An answer doesn't have to be concrete, but it should be at least a "lightly packed gravel" answer. As for your question, you're walking on the line. If you put a ton of research into your question, figure out most of the parts of the design, and ask a well-written question about the parts you cannot figure out, it's probably not going to be closed. However, if you just add two sentences to the body, it's a lot more likely to be closed. The point is, we cannot tell if your question is too broad without seeing it.
What do I do then? Let's break it down. First, figure out your design objectives. You're never going to achieve the fastest, so figure out how fast is good enough. How much can you spend? How big will this be? Will it have any cargo or other sensors?
Then, let's look at a bit more specific stuff:

Chassis: Steel? Plastic? Wood? Candy canes? Look at your tools and resources and pick that out. This is essential in how much this will weigh
Sensor System: Do you have the budget for an array of sensors so you can build better algorithms? How will you mount them? How fast can you sample them?
Motors: How will you drive them? How will you power them? Servo, stepper, or brushed? Closed or open loop feedback?
Board: How many things do you need to attach? Power usage constraints? How will you communicate with it? Do you need an ARM board?

You get the point. If you didn't specify enough information, I could tell you to try one of these if you don't specify, and I doubt that you want to attach something explosive to your Arduino! :)
The thing is, design questions are really hard to answer and they take a long time to get answered. If you put the time into your question, people will be a lot more willing to answer and you're a lot less likely to get your question closed. Furthermore, you get more specific answers that're more useful to you and you get a sense of pride when you realize that you designed most of this without any help. Just remember: we're here to help you along the way, not do everything for you.

"We're here to help you along the way, not do everything for you."
That's what I was looking for indeed. And it's true, it should be that way, asking "How to make such a system" is way to broad and people should indeed do some research themselves or atleast write down what they already know.
But Stack Exchange isn't really for "discussing"?
Or well the World Building SE has some very broad questions, of which no answer is correct, but sometimes one is the most 'probable/plausible'.
However you're right on that you would need more details if you're actually going to start the project.

@FuaZe the thing that separates us and Software Recs or us and WB is that, although their answers are nowhere near concrete, it's still possible to answer it in a few paragraphs. Your question would require a lot of research and a really long answer to answer the question fully. Tastefully subjective questions are actually encouraged because they make interesting questions. So: your question would be OK as long as you focused in on a single issue (or a few related issues) that could be easily answerable.


text:
How can we make it even more clear that this is a site for Arduino?
Today I first bumped into a question about the Intel Edison, and just now one about the Raspberry Pi. Apparently the word "Arduino" doesn't make it clear that this is about, erm, Arduino.
How can we make this more clear (if possible), and keep questions about other platforms out?
(I flagged both questions for migration to http://electronics.stackexchange.com)

All SE sites have blatantly off topic questions from users who think they're on topic... I think most new people perceive the scope a lot more loosely than it actually is--myself included. The hard questions to steer people away from are the questions that have an Arduino element but are off topic (like programming a display app on a computer that communicates with an Arduino).

By the way, isn't there a SE site for Pi question and shouldn't any such questions be migrated to that?

We've had similar issues with people asking Android questions in the past. I'm not sure there's much we can do to stop people from making that mistake. Part of the confusion might come from the fact that all Stack Exchange sites have exactly the same design during beta.
As a side note, the Intel Edison isn't necessarily off-topic here. It's officially certified as an Arduino-compatible product. Obviously it depends on the context of the individual question though, as it can certainly be used in non-Arduino ways too.

The "officially certified" is of course a bad joke. Their own Arduino is so poorly documented that it wouldn't pass any certification at all. And have you read the 4 requirements for certification? There's nothing about compatibility.

I just flagged http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/15984/unable-to-set-up-intel-edison-on-windows as off-topic. As far as I can see the Intel Edison is just leveraging (pfft, is that a word?) off the Arduino name. It - at best - seems to be "compatible with the Arduino IDE".


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How to attract highly skilled / knowledgeable users to Arduino.SE (instead of EE.SE or SO)
Before I started to tinker with Arduino some months ago, I was already a heavy-user of StackOverflow (I am a professional programmer) and at times EE (home-made electronics now and then has been a hobby for almost twenty years).
As such, when I started the Arduino think I was glad to find out there is an Arduino SE, and looked for some some questions and their answers here, and even asked some myself.
Two things that I notice are:

The quality of the answers seems to be quite lower than answers you would get from EE or SO with a similar or identical question;

Virtually any question you could ask here could be answer with minimal modifications at one of the two other SE sites. They even have, as already noted elsewhere, very active "arduino" tags. If I'm not mistaken, I have already asked here and, due to lack of convergence, re-asked at SO and quickly got a good answer.
I believe this happens because there is a relatively high availability of specialized "software guys" or "hardware guys" in each of the other sites, so answers come quick and have good quality. On the other hand, if I was to consider myself an "(sort of) advanced" SE user, I could say I was, say "disappointed" with the results I got, and preferred to stick to the well-beaten path of SO for software or EE for hardware.

So, question would be:

Should Arduino SE make anything to attract interested power-users from SO and EE? And what could be done in that direction?

Fundamentally, the way to get skilled and knowledgeable posters to answers Arduino questions is to discontinue this site and put those questions back where they belong and where - as you have observed - there are already pools of knowledgeable people to answer them.
Unfortunately, the existence of this site serves as an excuse for dumping questions from more appropriate settings such as Stack Overflow and Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, even when the details of those questions are far, far more appropriate to the respective subject areas of those sites.  The test is simple - if a question would belong had it mentioned some other MCU or embedded evaluation platform, then fundamentally it still belongs even if it mentions an Arduino, and pretending otherwise is just uselessly fragmenting things.
Apart from oddities of the IDE and the like, there are few problems that are uniquely Arduino - rather, most issues that come up are classic ones encountered across the whole of embedded, programming, and electronics work.  Flush a question to the "Arduino backwater" and you can't get help from the person who solved the same problem on a PIC or ARM last week, nor can an answer contributed in the ATmega/Arduino context to an obscure site help someone solve the same problem on a different chip next week in the way it could if posted to the site that handles that topic for all other contexts.
The solution is not to segregate the Arduino questions, but rather to push back against the bigots in certain communities, work with posters to improve the quality of questions asked in their natural and appropriate settings when the initial posts aren't complete enough to answer, and do our best to make sure that questions get useful, technically sound, and transferable answers.  A lot of questions here aren't even about Arduino at all - but rather about peripherals that could be used with any processor.
Hiding the Arduino stuff on this backwater of a site does none of the above - instead, it means that Arduino questions get few answers, often containing glaring technical errors, and it allows the bad behavior on other sites to continue unchallenged.

As sad as it is, being myself an Arduino convert, to deny the joy of having a dedicated SE community, every line of your answer is totally true either from experience or from analysys of what you've written. I have to agree, thanks for caring!

(by the way, the very "radio silence" on this question is already a bad smell...)

I fear that as the very nature of Arduino is that of the beginner - that's why it was created, after all - that an increased integration with either SO, EE, or both could sink the ship completely.
There are people asking question on ArduinoBeta everyday who have no clue about programming or electronics whatsoever. Even the basics, despite there being so many tutorials knocking around on the internet. Thus, they don't know that a simple edit or rewording is going to get them a better result from one of the full-blown sites.
ArduinoBeta needs to be nutured by a careful and patient few, at least for now. I get a little annoyed by the migration of questions from SO/EE to here just because it has an Arduino tag, especially a question that has been well laid out and is worthy of somebody's time to answer it. That will only stop as ArduinoBeta grows and sheds its Beta skin.
I stumbled across ArduinoBeta - don't remember how - and was surprised by how quiet it was. It hasn't taken long to spot some regular contributors who are no doubt like you or I; specialists in something, adventurers in something else and a downright liability in others, but if the masses from SO or EE start flooding in then the potential over-complication of answers may begin, through nobody's fault. Eventually the Askers will stop coming back, and never bloom into contributors.
Perhaps let's just let the stumblers stumble. I think a rapid addition of some canonical questions may serve to up the general level, but then there will still be the task of teaching newbies how to use this site.
Additional:
I don't really like to name names but this user is precisely the reason we need to protect ArduinoSE from grumpy outsiders. His scathing comments in response to this question, about AT328 vs AT32u4 with regard to the Arduino community are damaging and vindictive towards anybody that would dare utter the word 'Arduino' in EE.SE . He is a respected member of SE and I don't question his knowledge or expertise one bit, but if he can't accept an new ethos in a particular field he's that makes him a bad engineer.

I cannot see how to reconcile the essence of SE communities - that of users that come back and have a long-term improvement trajectory around a common interest, gathering badges and rep - with the idea of "perpetual novices". The more one uses ArduinoSE, the less beginner she is, and thus less "fit" she is to be here. Perhaps I got it wrong, but I think this surmises the (sort of) discomfort I feel when I think about it.

(well, it has already been said that Arduino is a gateway drug into darker realms of programming and electronics... :o)


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Where to announce/discuss stuff?
I've just received an email from the microsoft insider program, where they spotlight windows 10 IoT support for Arduino

We’re also excited to announce our partnership with Arduino, making Windows 10 the world’s first Arduino-certified operating system. Learn more about Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shields for Arduino and get started here.

^Sorry for not having the links in it.
Is there anywhere on Arduino Stack Exchange to announce this? I was tempted to create a question as announcement, as I think it's quite interesting for everyone who's busy with arduino. I'm not sure if announcing it in chat will do.
I found that there are little chat-rooms on the site. Is this a topic worth a chatroom? And will the chatroom stay even if everyone leaves it for a moment?

The blockquote you included in your question reads to me like part of an advertisement, so there's really not a good place for it on this site. If that's not the message you want to spread (i.e. if I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "announcement"), please let me know.
You are of course welcome to ask questions on the main site about Arduino/Windows 10 integration when the time comes.
To answer your procedural question, chat content never goes away, although it can get soft-deleted just like Q&A posts or remain visible in a read-only state. For more info, see the chat FAQ.


text:
What is a canonical question, exactly?
I've been reading some posts about canonical questions, and am still not sure what they are. Examples:

Can we get some canonical questions going?

Should we make a canonical “How to send data using serial?” question?

The Wikipedia of Long Tail Programming Questions

Is a canonical question like what we would call in Australia a Dorothy Dixer where you ask a question to which you know the answer? For example:

Q. (by Nick) How do interrupts work on the Arduino?
A. (by Nick) Glad you asked! I'll explain them ...

Or is it (as some of the links above seem to indicate) just improving existing questions?

I could probably do some "reference" questions if they were wanted, I just want to clarify if that is what is intended by the expression.

I also notice a checkbox: "Answer your own question". What does that do? Does that mean you put the question and the answer into the same post, or does it indicate you are planning to answer your own question?

I would sum it up as this: a question with an answer that is generally regarded as "the authority" on a topic. For example, "avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00," aka Some Dude Named Avr Won't Let Me Upload My Program is basically a canonical question.
The goal is to compile one source of information that is more useful than lots of fragmented answers across hundreds of questions.

I also notice a checkbox: "Answer your own question". What does that do? Does that mean you put the question and the answer into the same post, or does it indicate you are planning to answer your own question?

Click on it! It adds another textbox that is converted into an answer when you post. It's a good idea to do this out of respect for others; if the question and answer are both posted at the same time, people won't spend wasting time researching and writing answers when you are drafting your own answer.


text:
Some of the "unanswered" questions don't really deserve that title
I've been browsing the unanswered questions, partly because Area 15 says:

71% answered: Needs Work – 90% answered is a healthy beta, 80% answered needs some work.

However I've found some "unanswered" questions really were answered, for example:

Crash when using std::queue. That had a perfectly good answer by Edgar Bonet, however he did it as a comment, not an answer so it didn't count.
What could cause interrupts from MCP23017 suddenly stop working? - the OP worked out the problem and acknowledged that in a comment, however the question went "unanswered".
Attiny85 programmer with Arduino error Yikes! Invalid device signature - again, answered in the question comments, and acknowledged as such by the OP.
After putting Arduino Uno into DFU mode, it is no longer recognised by PC - the OP is asked for clarification but doesn't respond so the question lapses.

It seems to me unfair that these questions go into the "29% unanswered" bundle when they really were answered, or the OP simply lost interest (probably got it answered somewhere else).
Does this seem right? Is there a way of fixing up these statistics in some way?

Attiny85 programmer with Arduino error Yikes! Invalid device signature - I don't think that one ever got answered as the OP was vague as to what worked and then went on to buy a proper programmer. Note I was commenting there.

In cases where there's already an answer in the comments (or edited into the original question by the OP), we could copy it into a Community Wiki answer, with an appropriate acknowledgement. That will show up as an answer, but will prevent reputation going to the wrong person.
In situations where a question can't be answered due to lack of information (and the OP hasn't responded for a long time), we can vote to close the question as "Unclear what you're asking".
These steps won't solve the problem entirely, but it might help a little. What's important is to get the community involved in Review tasks so that problems can be dealt-with quickly. The other moderators and I aren't really supposed to do that ourselves (we're only supposed to deal with exceptional cases). I see the review queues are getting rather long again though, so we may have to step in to help things move along.

I've always suggested the OP make their comment an answer so others can find it more easily. They can get the reputation, as well.

Related: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117251/what-should-be-done-with-questions-that-have-been-self-resolved-as-a-comment-ins

Cleaning up these ild questions will make the site look cleaner, and I think that will help longer-term to improve the review process.


text:
Is a question "is this possible" too broad?
I've seen a few questions like this one which seem so broad as to be meaningless.

My requirement is to read data from ibeacons near me using Arduino. Is it possible?

Well, most things are possible, with enough effort. Maybe not video editing on a Duemilanove, but you get the idea.
I voted to close that one because it was a virtual duplicate of another post by the same fellow but in any case isn't this question a bit hard to answer?
I personally try to be helpful if I can, but questions like that seem to suggest that the OP has not done any research at all, and basically wants code written. In the second thread I linked he said:

My requirement is to read data transmitted from iBeacon, is it possible using HC-05 or I have to shift to HM-10?
Please help.

Am I being too harsh? Or do we need to encourage people to try a bit harder with their questions?

The referenced question is crystal clear to anyone who knows the first thing about the technologies in question.  Those who don't understand it probably aren't in a position to write useful answers anyway.  Compatibility of radio modems is relatively binary - they either work together or they don't with little room between. The first referenced device (HC-05) is incompatible no matter what someone does, while the second (HM-10) contains one of the two most widely used chips for that purpose, meaning that it merely comes down to the question of what firmware has been loaded into that chip.

"Well, most things are possible, with enough effort. Maybe not video editing on a Duemilanove..." Challenge accepted!


text:
Can we have a "no longer reproducible" close reason?
Stack Overflow has this as one of their custom close reasons:

This question was caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced or a simple typographical error. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a manner unlikely to help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and closely inspecting the shortest program necessary to reproduce the problem before posting.

I think that something like this would be helpful for our site. Do we want this close reason for Arduino SE? Should it be rewritten? What do you guys think?
One question that I would like to close with this proposed close reason is this question: Arduino UNO code ignores variables selectively (It'd also be helpful for using the wrong baud rate)

This one, too: http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/13671/doesnt-work-radio-transmission-from-arduino-uno-to-arduino-pro-micro/13725#13725

http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/16296/using-an-arduino-as-a-electrical-mains-switch

This one, too: http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/17476/why-is-my-tmp35-giving-me-weird-values/17589#17589


text:
I answer a question, and then the OP deletes the question. Grrr

I saw a question about an hour ago, it looked reasonable. It was about passing an array of values to a function. I answered it, it took 10 or 15 minutes, including making up some example code.
Half an hour later I go to check on whether I made any typos, but couldn't find any history of the question at all! Not even in the "moderator tools" list of deleted questions (ie. "recently deleted").

It wasn't listed in my "all actions":

I was starting to doubt my sanity at this point. I'm sure I answered it! I even have the code in my IDE:
class myClass {
  const int num_;
  const int * values_;

  public:

  // constructor
  myClass (const int num, const int * values) : num_ (num), values_ (values) { }

  // other stuff here

  // demo
  void printThem ();
};  // end of class myClass

void myClass::printThem ()
  {
  for (int i = 0; i < num_; i++)
    Serial.println (values_ [i]);
  } // end of myClass::printThem

const int NUMBER_OF_VALUES = 6;
const int myValues [NUMBER_OF_VALUES] = { 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77 };

// make an instance of the class with the wanted values
myClass foo (NUMBER_OF_VALUES, myValues);

void setup ()
  {
  Serial.begin (115200);
  Serial.println ();

  foo.printThem ();
  }  // end of setup

void loop ()
  {

  }  // end of loop

So, did I dream it? Did I answer a question that came to me in a vision?
I couldn't find any trace of it, until I remembered the browser history:

There it was! The question did exist. Clicking on that link in the browser history revealed the question:

And my answer:

Now I'm pretty pissed off. I've seen this sort of behaviour before on other sites, but I thought StackExchange was supposed to be a knowledge base of good questions and good answers. Not to get an answer and then delete the question and the answer.

So what's my question?

Is this acceptable behaviour?
How do you deal with people that ask a question, wait for you to answer it, and then delete the question?
Why is the answer not listed in "all actions"? I did an action. I answered a question. I expect that to be listed.
How can they even delete the answer as well? On the Arduino forum, if you delete your question the answer still stays there, and then a moderator tells the person not to do that again.

Moderators: Please undelete the question, undelete the answer, protect the question from further deletion, and have a word with the OP.

Another example of OPs vandalising their own questions, nRF24L01+ Arduino mpu6050 [closed]

I recently had this happen to me after I had spent a good bit of time trying to write a quality answer that should have been helpful to other users with the same question in the future: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/q/43345. After finding that my answer solved their problem, the author deleted the question. This is the sort of behavior I have come to expect from the average Arduino beginner but the sad thing is that the user who did this is rated in the "top 2%" of Arduino Stack Exchange users.

I have undeleted that question. I can't see a valid reason for deleting it.

Is this acceptable behaviour?

Yes and no. If there was a reason for deletion, it may be OK. However, there doesn't seem to be any reason the OP would delete. Otherwise, I'd say no. It's really dependent on the situation.

How do you deal with people that ask a question, wait for you to answer it, and then delete the question?

Flag it for moderator attention.

Why is the answer not listed in "all actions"? I did an action. I answered a question. I expect that to be listed.

Deleted posts aren't listed in that section.

How can they even delete the answer as well? On the Arduino forum, if you delete your question the answer still stays there, and then a moderator tells the person not to do that again.

We're not the Arduino forum, so there's that.
The OP can delete a question if it has only one answer with no upvotes (in this case they could delete)

For now, I've undeleted the question/answer and left a comment to ensure that there isn't some lingering reason the OP wants the question deleted.

Thanks for that, however the fact that I had to hunt down the link in my browser history shows it would be easy to "get away with" asking a question, getting a good answer, and then deleting both the question and the answer. The rule that he can delete a question if it has only one answer with no upvotes lets him get away with this concept of treating StackExchange as a method of getting free, private consulting. I suggest there should be a time interval before he can do this - so other people can at least view the question/answer and perhaps upvote the answer.


text:
What would you think about broadening the topic to include Raspberry Pi, Robotics and Embedded Systems in general?
I recently participated in the Embedded Systems private beta. It will be closing down next Friday, because there was not enough activity. In the meta post on the closing of the site, Andrew, a Robotics pro-temp moderator suggested that four beta sites are merged together to create one viable Embedded Systems site:

Arduino (542 days in beta)
Raspberry Pi (1151 days in beta)
Robotics (1018 days in beta)
Embedded Systems (10 days in beta, closing down)

I collected some statistics from Area 51 for each beta (as of Aug 8, 2015):
Site      | Q : day | Answered | Users (200+ / 2K+ / 3K+) | A : Q | Visits / day
----------+---------+----------+--------------------------+-------+--------------
Arduino   |   9.5   |   72%    |      150 / 13 / 6        |  1.9  |     5106
Rasp. Pi  |  11.9   |   82%    |      438 / 24 / 17       |  1.8  |    21548
Robotics  |   2.3   |   88%    |       125 / 9 / 3        |  1.8  |     1516
Emb. Sys. |   7.7   |   85%    |        24 / 0 / 0        |  1.6  |      80

Some numbers may be lower than normally due to summer holidays in the northern hemisphere.
Currently, Raspberry Pi seems to be the most viable, followed by Arduino.  However, I think every site could be helped by a merge, because they have actually a lot in common.

A search for "Arduino" on Raspberry Pi.SE yields 215 questions (2.6%), of which only 11 closed
A search for "Raspberry Pi" on Arduino.SE yields 71 questions (1.9%), of which only 3 closed
Robotics.SE most used tag is Arduino (208 Q). It also has a Raspberry-Pi tag (57 Q)
Raspberry Pi.SE has an Arduino tag (100 Q)
Arduino.SE has a robotics tag (35 Q)

To illustrate the great overlap between these sites: I myself am a hobbyist and a computing science student. I own a Raspberry Pi and some other embedded systems like Particle's Photon. I also own  I have worked with LEGO robots and Arduino. I have several modules that can be used with an Arduino which I use with PIC microcontrollers. I am currently working on a PIC32-based standalone text editor.
I do not think we would have many issues defining a scope which is distinguished enough from Electronics, Programmers or Stack Overflow. After all, your site and the others have been doing that already for quite some time. Think of the suggested merge as the least common multiple of the four sites.
I have looked through the questions on all four sites and have the impression that questions on many of these sites are of interest also to users on other sites. I'm most sceptical about Robotics.SE. Anyway, this overlap is what makes me think Andrew's suggestion might be a good idea. But what do I know? I'm not active on any of these sites!
So, what do you think? Would your community benefit of a merge  with (some of) these sites?
Disclaimer: I do not know what SE, Inc. thinks about this. Polling the communities seemed a good idea to me.
I opened the same question on Raspberry Pi Meta and Robotics Meta.

Personally I would vote not to, on the following grounds:

On the figures quoted, the merged site would go from around 10 questions per day (here) to 30, however of those 30 only 10 would be relevant to people interested in Arduino. This effectively dilutes the number an Arduino-enthusiast could answer (percentage wise). There might be some cross-over (eg. from the Embedded Systems site) but I couldn't view it to check, because it was in closed beta.
I've found this site here (the Arduino one) quite friendly, and reasonably helpful to newbies. That is probably one of the reasons it needs to exist. The Arduino is marketed as being intended for anyone making interactive projects. This is one of the reasons why I think a tolerance for beginners is important.
I've found some of the other StackExchange sites a little less friendly to newbies, with posts being closed within minutes of being made as off-topic, irrelevant, already answered, and so on.

Having said that, it looks like a merge between Embedded Systems and Robotics with this site would be the least disruptive, especially if the Robotics site normally talks about Arduinos.
I'm the least in favour of the Raspberry Pi being merged. It is a different processor, it uses a Unix operating system, and is generally quite different to an Arduino. Also, some of it is closed source, unlike the Arduino.

An alternative would be to simply suggest to the (relatively small number of) users at Embedded Systems that they find a new home here.

Thank you for your thoughts. We're shutting down on Friday, but if you would like to have a look around at embedded.SE, you could drop me an email at info@camilstaps.nl and I can invite you to the private beta.

I think merging could be useful.
We've certainly found that there's lots of people with questions about Arduino. However, being Arduino-specific means we have rather awkward and unhelpful boundaries for what is considered "on topic". For example, newcomers to the field don't necessarily understand what constitutes Arduino stuff and what is just general electronics or embedded systems.
That being said, coming up with a sensible boundary for a new merged site will be tricky. The major issue is that a lot of this stuff could easily be covered by the Electronics SE. However, as we've seen, some EE regulars are often not newbie-friendly (and can be downright hostile against Arduino and the like).
A while back, I proposed a "Makers and Tinkerers" site on Area 51. The idea was that it would be something like EE but for hobbyists and occasional users (rather than professionals or serious enthusiasts). It didn't gain any interest though, so I didn't pursue it any further. Perhaps it's something we could try again?

We have similar problems on Robotics, but have both custom close reasons and copy pastable text to help mitigate the problems.

This is a copy of my answer to Camil Staps' copy of this question over on Robotics

Although I am open to the idea, my current preference is against a mega-merge of Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Embedded and Robotics.
As I said in my answer to Embedded Systems StackExchange (suggesting merging Embedded and Robotics):

Having had a look at the questions on the site and only been able to identify one, I don't think that any kind of merge would be appropriate, but we should certainly suggest (using that answer) that any questions which are on topic here be migrated here.

I think that part of the problem here is that people seem to think that there is something wrong with a site which is asking good questions, getting good answers and accumulating page views and users, but hasn't yet graduated.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with this situation, and Stack Exchange have finally woken up to the idea that some small, niche sites will never reach graduation criteria, but equally will never disappear, and that we need to handle this state of 'perpetual beta' more gracefully.
See Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites and Should we rename or remove the "beta" label?
As I mentioned in a comment on Andrew's answer to Closing this [Embedded] site on Friday, August 14

The problem is that merging four sites with four scopes and four communities risks destroying all four. In particular, a clash of cultures and alienation of existing users is a big risk. Ultimately any stack exchange site needs to stand on it's own and now that permanent beta is the rule rather than the exception, we have to accept that small workable vertical sites may well be better than broader based, artificial amalgams. In essence, a strong & growing community, even if it is small, is preferable to a weak diminishing one.

In the long term, I hope that perpetual beta sites will start to get some of the benefits of graduated sites, even if it isn't worth Stack Exchange spending time and development resources on a custom site design.

By maintaining a seperate arduino community, what you create is essentialyl a debug/troubleshoot forum for arduino. There is no real definition of arduino besides their simplified peripheral library and the platforms its been ported to. 90% of the questions on this site have no inherent reason to use the arduino besides availability. By expanding the scope to allow for all embedded platforms it allows for the community to grow and solicit questions and answers across platforms


text:
Beta progress update (August 2015)
I'm Pops, one of the Community Managers at Stack Exchange. We on the SE team announced some changes to graduation a few months ago that applied across the network. Those of you who follow such things may be wondering how Arduino SE is doing in the "new system," so I'm here to give you an update based on a recent CM evaluation.
tl;dr: Arduino has been doing pretty well! There's a lot of good information in the Meta SE post I linked above, but the most important point with respect to graduation is this: our primary criterion for evaluating sites is now the number of new questions received per day. You're bouncing around ten questions a day (sometimes less, but sometimes more), which we consider pretty strong.
With that said, we're still not quite ready to consider you graduated. The primary reason is the lack of high-reputation users on the site. Although we're currently making some changes to the processes of graduation, all fully graduated sites will ultimately still have their reputation requirements for various privileges (e.g. editing, voting to close, voting to delete) increased from public beta levels, as described here.
As I write this, Arduino SE isn't home to a single user with 10k or more reputation points, which means that nobody would be able to vote to delete or undelete posts after the change in privilege levels; your total number of users with at least 3000 rep is barely enough to agree to close any question; and there aren't that many more at 2000 rep, who would be able to edit. Community moderation is an integral part of the design of Stack Exchange sites, so we really need to see more users who would be able to take those actions to consider the site for graduation.
Aside from reputation, there are a couple more minor concerns. For one, your "percent answered" rate is among the lowest in the network, which has been addressed here on meta before. However, all of the "worse" sites are either already graduated or special cases, and the community discussion about the problem — though sparse — has led to at least one good potential solution.
The other issue is that the scope of this site doesn't seem to be 100% set yet. Just a couple weeks ago, there was a moderately popular proposal to merge this site with a few others, and the friction with EE about where to ask hasn't completely dissipated. We're not too concerned about this, since Arduino is a fairly well-defined topic, but you as a community do need to decide soon whether you want to make any major changes, because after graduation is too late.
I hope this rundown has been useful for you. If you have any ideas or comments, leave 'em below!

For one, your "percent answered" rate is among the lowest in the network ...

Would you be able to clarify how to fix this? I went through some old questions (as you noted) and found:

Some of them are "impossible" to answer. For example, we ask "which Arduino?" and get no response.
Others were answered, but in comments.
Others were properly answered, but the OP did not accept the answer.

Can you explain what we can do to reduce the percentage unanswered, to get a fairer score?

For ones with outstanding queries, does "vote to close" or "flag for moderator attention" help? In other words, do closed questions count as unanswered ones?
I can of course copy and paste a "comment which answered the question" into an answer, at risk, of being accused of taking someone else's credit.
What do you do with questions which have a perfectly valid answer, which the OP doesn't bother to accept?

I have a feeling that if I sit here and "vote to close" 300 questions I'm going to be told to "stop doing that, it's annoying". Maybe not.
The thing is with these sort of questions (and I see this on the Arduino Forum as well) that people want their questions answered today - and they even spray the same question onto:

Arduino Forum
Adafruit Forum
EE StackExchange
StackOverflow
Arduino StackExchange
Personal messages to anyone who has a lot of posts

Then when they get an answer somewhere they lose interest in all the other places they asked. Their job is done, they move on. Meanwhile we have an unanswered question because they didn't provide basic information.

Can you clarify exactly what makes a question show up in the "unanswered" list?
Obviously:

No answer (but not closed?)

However what about:

Answered but answer not accepted
Answered with upvotes but not accepted

Suppose I go and answer 50 questions with no current answer. Does that reduce the list by 50? Or do I have to hope the OP accepts the answer, and/or that two (or more?) other users vote up my answer?

(Added)

I chatted with your mods for a bit, because I did suspect that your topic might naturally lean towards a lower answered percentage.

Yes, quite. Some of the questions are about some of the newer Arduinos, connected to some interfacing chip we may not have heard of, and from that to some new-fangled GPS gadget just released last week.
So the chances that some, at least, of the questions are hard to answer is high.
It's a bit different to (say) Cooking SE, where people are unlikely to say: "roast pork? - never heard of it!".

... advocated gaining reputation by improving on others' incomplete contributions ...

I've been going through some of the old questions, and as far as possible (which isn't all that far) converting what appear to be "accepted" answers (in the comments) into real answers. I've naturally given credit along the lines of "As so-and-so posted ...".

Answering your last question first, because it affects the others: the SE software considers a question "unanswered" if it has neither an accepted answer nor any upvoted answers. (There's actually a reminder of this definition in tiny print in the sidebar of the main Unanswered page if you ever need to look it up again.) So, as long as a question has a decent answer posted, the community can get it out of "unanswered" status with a single vote, whether the original asker is super active or abandoned the site right after posting.

Before I posted this progress report, I chatted with your mods for a bit, because I did suspect that your topic might naturally lean towards a lower answered percentage. They didn't disagree, and that's fine; as I mentioned, most of the other sites near the bottom of the pack are also graduates. (They're no secret; you can check them out at the all sites list.) So, no need to go on a closing spree (which would indeed be annoying). Voting more may do the trick, and is good practice anyways! And now for the other solution I alluded to...

Long ago, when Stack Overflow was just opening its doors, Joel Spolsky (one of the co-founders, and current head of the company) actually advocated gaining reputation by improving on others' incomplete contributions. Of course the community quickly decided that was rude when done to "steal rep," but I don't see anything wrong with improving the unanswered percentage by reposting some comments as answers, if they are suitable standalone answers. Might help to give the commenters a chance to do it themselves first and/or use CW.

I've responded to your comments in the main reply. Thanks for clarifying.

the SE software considers a question "unanswered" if it has neither an accepted answer nor any upvoted answers - what if I upvote my own answer? Is it answered then? I found an unanswered question pop up a moment ago. I thought my answer was reasonable, but it sits there with no upvotes, no acceptance, no comment even. Should I upvote it to put it out of its misery?

The system doesn't let users upvote their own answers. If it did, everyone would, both because it'd mean rep for free and because why would you post an answer if you didn't believe it was good? If there's a consistent pattern of good answers not getting upvoted, then that is a serious problem with site culture that needs to be addressed.

After reading Design-Independent Graduation is on for early September! I have another response. :)
I see from Area 51 that we are now getting 10 questions a day.
Thus the main issue for not graduating is:

The primary reason is the lack of high-reputation users on the site.

I gather from the link above that there is some talk about gradually raising privilege levels (or maybe just deferring the time it is done). Isn't this viable? I gather that, right now, the privilege levels are 20% of that of a full site.
And, of course, not many people have 20 k privilege (like, zero). However as time goes by, people who consistently ask or answer good questions will get increased privilege. It would seem reasonable to let us graduate, then bump up the privilege levels at (say) every 4 to 6 months, until they reach the levels of the fully graduated sites.
eg. 20% / 40 % / 60 % / 80% / 100% of normal.

Now you're getting into better-as-a-separate-meta-post territory, but this has been discussed before. (Don't have a link handy at the moment but if you're really interested I can dig for one later.) My first reaction to a "sliding scale" for privileges is that it would be horribly confusing to users, both in the sense that there would be poor consistency across sites, and that people would show up to a given site and have a privilege one day but not the next, and have it again the following day, then lose it again later on...


text:
Can we have a "OP does not respond to queries" close reason?
Example question:
Unexpected Timer Conflicts (Uno)
Marked as unanswered. However a reply (later converted to a comment) asking for more information has been completely ignored.
How can this ever be answered if the OP does not post code? And for other posts if the OP does not state what Arduino they have?

Suggest a "vote to close" reason: Clarification to question sought: none provided.
I'm guessing that a question that is months old, and getting no activity has been abandoned as "too hard" or answered elsewhere.
Meanwhile we get another "unanswered question" on our list.

If there isn't enough information to answer the question then I think "Unclear what you're asking" is a suitable close reason.

Indeed - though a more effective mechanism for disposing of questions which have been abandoned in this state for months could be useful.  As an aside, questions questionably migrated from other sites where they are also on topic sometimes get stuck in this state if the asker does not follow the involuntary relocation of their question here.


text:
Automatic replace in questions
Would it be possible to set automatic replace for some certain words in questions?
For example:

"Arduino" is a name and should start with a capitalized letter, there are no
exceptions to that.
" , " should be replaced with ", " because there are no cases where
there should be a space before a comma (or "?", "!" and ".").
Names of boards like "Arduino UNO" should fix themselves
automatically.
Double and triple exclamation marks and question marks also could be
auto-replaced.

If this was possible I think it would make the questions and answers more consistent and right saving some work to adjust those posts.

I don't really like auto-fixups. There are times when they drive you insane. You may overlook borderline cases. For example:

" , " should be replaced with ", " because there are no cases where there should be a space before a comma

Maybe in some comma-delimited file:
1234,  , , 5678

Double and triple exclamation marks and question marks also could be auto-replaced.

How about:

I tried to upload code to my Mega, but found it wouldn't upload when I had "!!!" in it:
     Serial.println ("Furnace too hot!!!");

Names of boards like "Arduino UNO" should fix themselves automatically.

Posts like your question would become impossible because you wouldn't be able to express the words "Arduino UNO". For example, you may be wanting to explain that UNO is the wrong capitalization to someone.
For example, what if someone posts "How come you corrected my spelling to Uno when it has UNO printed on the board?".

Everything in the quote, link and code tags could be ignored. The replacing should be really specific. Like only capitalising Arduino, Arduino model name first letter. The filters can be made really safe and I am quite sure the amount of errors reduced would be greater than the amount of errors created.


text:
Processing, signal-processing and text-processing tags
Could we rename Processing (the language) tag to Processing-lang, and merge signal- and text-processing tags to data-processing tag.

What does data-processing mean?
Although it's clear what processing refers to -- and I agree with renaming that tag to clarify that it's about the processing language itself; tag signal-processing and tag text-processing don't have any usage guidance. I'm leery of combining two already ill-defined groups of questions into another even less-well-defined group.
I took a look at the existing tagged questions, there's currently 25 questions tagged signal-processing and 9 questions tagged text-processing.
I can guess that signal-processing would include digital signal processing techniques (within the Arduino's capability), as well as analog filtering.
Browsing the 9 questions tagged text-processing, it's not clear to me what this tag actually means.

how an Arduino program(sketch) deals with strings of text input and output?
how the C pre-processor processes the text of the source code?
how the Arduino-specific language elements work?

Is program-got-so-many-errors-about-expected-or-before-either really about text processing? Seems like this question turned out to be about why #define dw 8; should not have the semicolon.  Similarly arduino-program-got-error-expected-primary-expression-before-token-error doesn't contain anything that looks to me like text processing.
What about this question about F() FlashStringHelper -- that's useful and related to how constant string expressions are stored in an arduino program, but probably belongs in string instead.
And for that matter, why isn't How do I split an incoming string in text-processing when How to get string parts from string is? I'd edit it myself if I was sure what belonged in that tag.
So since text-processing has only 9 questions, and 0 followers, and it's unclear how these questions are related, let's instead:

rename processing to processing-lang as proposed by @Avamander
shore up signal-processing with a clear tag wiki definition
dispatch the 9 questions in text-processing to wherever they really belong (maybe string), then burninate text-processing.
add [text] as a synonym for string

Re-tagging individual questions is a straightforward edit, but without a clear well-defined definition of what the tag is supposed to mean, it's harder to find related stuff.

Done. (Although signal-processing still needs a description)


text:
Why are my flags being declined?
A couple of days I flagged a question  because it was an almost exact duplicate of another - and my "vote to close" was not accepted because the "other" so-called duplicate had not received an up-vote. Since I couldn't vote to close it, I flagged it. I mean, this was a clear cross-post.
The post was clearly a copy-and-paste by the same guy, who had made two accounts with similar names. (He claimed he couldn't log into one of them).
The response to my flag was "declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention". Well, I don't know how else to deal with a cross-post if the system doesn't let me "vote to close it".
Then the thread was in fact closed by a moderator:

This question is an exact duplicate of:
Consulting and inserting a string into an array if it doesn't exist (Arduino IDE)

So why do I get the flag declined: "flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention" - when in fact the moderator did intervene?
Now when I go to flag other things I get this message about how my other flags were declined, and maybe I should rethink things before I do any more flagging.

I've forgotten about that stipulation but I think there is a way to do it without a moderator. Let me do some digging.

because the "other" so-called duplicate had not received an up-vote

It's not the question that needs an upvote, it needs an upvoted or accepted answer.
This isn't meant to need random upvotes to close a question, but rather to make sure they both have a real answer before closing (I presume it is to prevent similar questions being closed that may appear duplicates on first glance that are slightly different).

The post was clearly a copy-and-paste by the same guy, who had made two accounts with similar names. (He claimed he couldn't log into one of them).

To be honest, I forgot about this (newer) rule when I declined your post. From some digging on SE meta, it seems as it would've allowed you to close it if it was the same account.
If it wasn't by the same author, the best route would've been to let it wait until one of them got an answer.

Then the thread was in fact closed by a moderator:
So why do I get the flag declined: "flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention" - when in fact the moderator did intervene?

This decline reason is for cases when a user who is not a moderator can do the action. That does not mean that, since the moderator already saw the instance, that they can't act upon it. It's designed as a nudge to say, "Hey! You don't need me to do that. Let someone else with rep who isn't a mod handle that instead."

Thanks for the clarification, but it seems odd that no-one can vote to close a duplicated question. I mean, answering one of them just rewards the cross-poster (whichever one you answer). This decline reason is for cases when a user who is not a moderator can do the action. - maybe I didn't read it properly, but as far as I could see I was powerless to do anything except flag for moderator intervention. And thus, neither could anyone else.

This is not a resolution to the problem.  If the original question has no answers worthy of an upvote, then a user cannot close the question without moderator assistance.  People should not upvote undeserving answers just to be able to close a duplicate question.

@ChrisStratton I agree—I never said otherwise. I updated my answer


text:
User always tries to promote their product
If you see all the post from this user Visual Micro. A great deal of his/her answers lead the user to a single product. Is this allowed by SE policy and should be flagged?

To be precise, 8 out of 25 posts refer to Visual Micro product, although, to be fair, at least one of the answers was to a question about the product.

Users are allowed post good, relevant answers that talk about their own product or website as long as they disclose their affiliation with the product or website in the answer.
Overt self-promotion should be down-voted or flagged as spam.
The Help Center has a page that addresses this.

Post good, relevant answers, and if some (but not all) happen to be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must disclose your affiliation in your answers.

S/he has made some posts which do not refer to Visual Micro. I'm a bit unsure about this one. If this Visual Micro product (which I don't personally use) is so great, why don't other people recommend it? That would be my first question.
I must admit some of my answers have links to my own web site, however I am not selling anything. Everything there is free for the taking, and the site does not have ads. Plus, I know StackExchange doesn't like "link only" answers, so I usually try to at least summarize the information I have on my site, so that the answer stands on its own. On the other hand, it seems silly to copy and paste huge swathes of text from one site to another (eg. how to make interrupts work) just to avoid posting links.
I might try asking this on Meta StackExchange, see if the issue is dealt with there.

In summary, I think answers along the lines of "My product XYZ from my website will solve that for you" are borderline advertisements. Especially if you have to pay for the product.
Without that disclosure, you may think that a trusted member of this site, not associated with the product, is recommending it.
Compare to some of my answers, like "I have code on my website that will solve that problem" (for free).

Related

Is sharing a recommendation for a paid product OK?

If you have used a particular product to solve a problem, it is ok to mention that in your answer, while also explaining how it is used to solve the problem.
It is not ok to link to a product or site in all your answers, or if the link is the whole answer. Especially not if it is your product or site.

How can I link to an external resource in a community-friendly way?

In my experience, posts with links are not downvoted if all these conditions are met:

you paraphrase the content of the linked item (possibly omitting details or examples)
you identify the author (yourself, MSDN, etc)
someone could benefit from the answer without reading the linked item at all
you include information to let the reader decide if clicking the link is worthwhile

Need explanation on the post removal

Linking to commercial products is a fine line to walk. If you are associated with the company that sells the product you link to, you need to disclose that ("our company makes a product called Frobnar, which you should look at").

Recommendations
Visual Micro (or any other similar user) be asked to do three things if s/he links to a related product page:

Disclose that s/he is (financially) associated with that site (it should be obvious from the user name, however some of those links do not mention the product by name until you have followed them).
Disclose that the recommended solution is a paid product
Provide enough information that you can tell, without following the link first, how the product would help, exactly.


text:
A questionable rejected edit
Now I'm not one to quibble over minor matters (I'm quite a laissez faire type of chap), but I recently made an edit to a question, which I was surprised to see rejected, especially when I saw the alternative accepted edit.
The edit that I proposed was the following:

I saw that it was rejected by the community for reasons of a subsequent edit,

To which I thought "Fair enough, I must have missed something, my edit was not sufficient", and was going to leave it at that. However, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to have a look at the replacement edit.
Imagine my surprise when the edit was merely to substitute a period for a comma, making it even more grammatically incorrect, whilst ignoring the obvious typos.

I understand that the OP has the overall say so when it comes to edits, but also there is the point of once you have posted something to SE, it also becomes a bit of a community effort to keep everything "spick and span".
Now I know that I am a bit of a stickler for grammar and capitalisation, and that may put people's backs up a bit, but am I missing something?
Admittedly, I did miss the spiting (in the last paragraph) which should probably be splitting but I don't think that was the real reason for rejection.
Hopefully this doesn't sound like a whinge, I would just like to know what the outcome in such circumstances should be.
Should the post be left as it stands, or should I attempt to retry the edits?

I would categorically reject this edit - it is far, far too trivial a change to justify bumping a question back to the top of a page, which an edit does.  If you want to contribute to the site, do something meaningful, don't just "or" a few character codes with the caps bit.

I made an edit a little while back (quite an extensive one, like yours) but while I was doing it the OP made a minor change. Since the OP can edit immediately, my edit was rejected. I think I tried again (laboriously retyping the corrections) and while I did that, the OP made another change! Pffft!
I left it for a while, I can't remember if I ended up changing it.
I suspect this is not at all an attack on your editing (which is usually very good as I recall) but just an unfortunate time-related thing (like, a race condition).
I would advise you to re-attempt your edit.


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How come we are being asked to review 8-month old posts?
I saw the review queue blow out by about 20 extra items today. As I worked through the "new user's answer to an old question" I noticed that the posts themselves were quite old, for example:

Notice that this "new user's answer" is 8 months old! This is a bit late, is it not, to: "Watch for hidden gems, non-answers, and spam".
That should have been done in January!

(edit)
This seems relevant: Can we raise the bar for reputation for late answers to bypass the review queue?

It's possible that this is the problem. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/213020/late-late-answer


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How do/did you detect plagiarism?
I was browsing a question thrown up by Mr. Community when I noticed that one of the replies had been deleted by a moderator for plagiarism.
I'm impressed that it was noticed, but how was that done? Did the moderator just have a really good memory? Or was it reported by someone else with a good memory? Or are there some automated ways of detecting plagiarism?

It was reported by someone else with a good memory. Plagiarism is generally considered rude, and folks are encouraged to report it when they see it; there's even a handy help-center page to refer folks to if they seem to be having trouble referencing others' work in a respectful manner.

Actually both assumptions are correct.  Check with your local high school they may have the software that does this.  It could also be our moderator, the more you read the more you will recognize.

If I see a rather (suspiciously) well written answer, from someone with a low reputation, I generally copy an eight to ten word chunk of it which contains specific text not likely to be found in general text or conversation and google it. It will normally come back in the top of the search results as someone else's work.
Tedious? Yes, and it may seem to be a bit anally retentive but it seems to work. Maybe I am just a suspicious paranoid type...
:-)


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buying arduino products
This post on Suggest me some good seller for Arduino UNO HAS to be a troll. Asked by a new user, responded by three people, all very low reputation.
What's the best "flag" to set?
I was going to choose spam, but they're not selling anything, although the answers provided very well might. So I chose opinion based answers.
I personally don't mind opinion based stuff, although it's not in line with StackExchange generally, the question (if asked via google) would yield hundreds of websites and ebay auctions to see the stuff...
Likewise for questions that don't show enough research, which is a pet peeve of mine, I would prefer a better mechanism than closing the question for low quality or lack of research. I'd much prefer the question be hidden from view and the author given 24 hours to rewrite/edit it to meet a better standard.
I realise that last point is beyond the scope of here, but what IS the best action for questions that show a complete lack of research, knowledge or personal examples of what they've done to try and resolve it?

I say that this is certainly not a troll, but someone after some shopping advice. I have noticed that low rep responders will often step in to answer a poor question. I'm not sure of the sociological reason for this - maybe because: no one with a high rep would want to answer a low quality shopping question, and so the low reppers step in, or; because they are all beginners too and have recently had to go through the whole "which one should I buy" process, and so it is fresh in their minds and they are eager to share their new found knowledge. I felt a little like this when I first started.

It is actually quite common to see someone set up two accounts - ask a question on one account then answer it, advertising a product, on the other account.  That way it gets around the immediate "this is spam" knee-jerk response.  It takes them a bit more work but the posts do tend to stay around longer. I have seen it many times before.

This post . . . HAS to be a troll. Asked by a new user, responded by three people, all very low reputation.

What makes you think it was a troll? Although the term "troll" is subjective, I do no think that this is a troll, but rather a new user who made a mistake.

What IS the best action for questions that show a complete lack of research, knowledge or personal examples of what they've done to try and resolve it?

Lack of research: Do not close a question for lack of research; just don't answer it. No one is forcing you to answer or even pay a tiny bit of attention to that post, so, frankly, don't if it bothers you. It doesn't matter if it's a pet peeve of yours or not, and I assure you that the dev team is not going to spend time implementing your suggested fix. (Link to SE policy on low research questions).
Lack of knowledge: If you can close it as unclear what you're asking, do that. However, it should be unclear what they're asking, and not just an excuse to close a question by a beginner.
Lack of personal examples: if they don't include their code/schematics, then closing as too broad is sufficient because the lack of details makes the question become a list of every possible thing to try for a generic issue.

As for the post itself, I closed it as primarily opinion based and have left it to be auto-deleted in a few days if left untouched. Since the posts did not have any evidence that it was self promotion and were directly relevant, I left them there and they will be auto-deleted with the post (assuming it does get deleted).


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Do we want hats (WinterBash 2015)?
Winter Bash (2014 (promotion page), 2013 (blog post)) is a fun Stack Exchange tradition to celebrate the holidays. Simply put, it's allows users to get "hats" that you can put on your avatar and that are displayed across the network on participating sites.
Speaking of participating sites, Stack Exchange allows each community to opt out as a whole if they have reasons to do so, such as appearing more professional without hats. If you're not a hatter (you're a hater of hats!), you can manually opt out of seeing hats on all Stack Exchange sites.
This event will run from December 14th, 2015 to January 3rd, 2016.
So let's hatve at it! Do we want hats?

Yes we loved to do!
But, as you know, these hats are static. My opinion is that let's wear well-designed dinamically gif pictures to get these gifts. Not static jpegs, just make these hats can be able to rotate, dance, shining, and/or shaking e.t.c. according to the forums.
For example, if I am in Stack overflow, I want my hat is flowing. And, if I am in Arduino Forum, I want my hat to blink itself with red, white, yellow colors.
These are my opinions to improve your question.


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Are we in our own special time zone?
I thought SE measured time in UTC, but I just got notified that I had earned the "A New Hope" hat whose criteria are described as "ask, answer, or vote on December 18th" – as I write this UTC is 15:48 on Thursday, December 17, 2015.

In case you haven't seen it yet, balpha addressed this on the network meta. From there:

Leeway on date-based hats
Unless the requirement mentions a specific timezone, hats that are date-based are often awarded for 14 hours before and 12 hours after the specified date in UTC, to accomodate people everywhere in the world. This means you can earn such a hat even though for you it's not even that day yet.

Example: The hat Living in a Box is awarded for voting to close a question on December 26th. To earn this hat, you have to cast a close vote between 12/25 at 10:00 UTC and 12/27 at 12:00 UTC.

In other words, you got the hat because you voted or posted when it was December 18th somewhere in the world.


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Beta progress update (January 2016)
It's been a few months since your previous beta progress update, so I want to check in again.
I'll start with the good news: you're continuing to do well on the primary metric for graduation, new questions per day. And you're making progress on the main issue I was concerned about in the previous update, building a corps of higher-rep users; you've gone from no 10k+ users to two, and you're right on the edge of having ten 3k+ users, too. Well done!
Unfortunately, as you might have expected from my wording, there is still bad news. A while ago, one of your mods asked me about stepping down for personal reasons. There hasn't been any visible change because I haven't been able to find a replacement for him yet. Those of you who have read about the changes to the graduation process posted last year on the network meta (maybe after reading the first beta progress update?) may remember that the second half of the post dealt with making the site closure process more systematic. From that post:

If there's enough moderation for a public beta site to consistently remain free of spam, for flags to be cleared, and for our Be Nice policy to be upheld, your site will remain open. However, if community leaders drop off, flags sit without being addressed, and we can’t find any suitable volunteers to step forward, the site gets closed.

Please do not be alarmed. This is not a "we are closing Arduino SE" announcement. We aren't at that point yet. Your mod team hasn't abandoned you, and the proverbial lawn is still getting proverbially mowed here. If anything, this site feels a bit like it's on autopilot. I don't get a sense of the community taking ownership here. Aside from the lack of people willing to be pro tems, there's little activity on meta—especially for a site this size— and still a somewhat low answer rate. This may be due to as simple a reason as diffusion of responsibility, or it could be somehow related to the topic of Arduino itself, or something else entirely; discussion is welcome.
This is an admittedly unusual situation. No community has ever simultaneously set off the questions-per-day graduation trigger and the "lack of moderation" red flag. To be honest, I never seriously considered that it might happen. I don't see any reason to deviate from the procedure in place for handling the moderation situation, though, so I am announcing an open call for new pro tem moderators. You can find out more about the job at the company blog post A Theory of Moderation and the now-somewhat-old meta post Who will be the Moderator? What attributes should they have?. If you have questions or want to volunteer, please e-mail me at pops@(stackoverflow or stackexchange, either one works).com.
Quick recap: there's (still) a lot of good here, but there are a few serious problems, too. Keep up the good work on question volume and building up the ranks of medium- and high-rep users. My immediate priority is finding new pro tem moderators. Once that situation is stable, we'll try to tackle some of the less serious issues, and re-evaluate for graduation.

I'm really new to Arduino, though not to SE. What I've found so far in my perambulations on the web is that there's still not a lot of expertise out there, or that this expertise is not being shared in the same way that, say, Bicycle knowledge or Mathematical knowledge is being shared.
This reflects in part what you are describing: lots of new questions, not a ton of answers, no one stepping up to moderate or lead the community. Could it be the relative newness of IoT in general? Or is there a component of intellectual property protection that goes hand-in-hand with the hardware/product development aspect of Arduino that is a cultural shift away from the Open Source philosophy that was so seminal to the success of the original SO?
I do hope this takes off. It's such a shame when good beta SEs close down - I've seen a fair share.

Where do you see IP protection in the Arduino community? My understanding is that the whole Arduino ecosystem is based on open source.

Or is there a component of intellectual property protection that goes hand-in-hand with the hardware/product development aspect of Arduino that is a cultural shift away from the Open Source philosophy that was so seminal to the success of the original SO? - are you referring to the internal Arduino problems? Even if so, this hardly impacts on this site. Most people in the Arduino community are happy to share their knowledge.

No, not at all. I'm referring to the fact that many IoT projects have aspirations to go on and get productized. While the code side of things might be very open, I was wondering aloud if the productization side of things might account for a certain reluctance to help others get ahead. It was just a theory and certainly doesn't reflect my own attitude.

I am presuming IoT is Internet of Things. I think it is in the nature of Arduino and microprocessors in general that people have such a wide range of ideas (many very interesting) that there is not necessarily a direction they can be "led" in. As for moderation (I am a moderator on the Arduino Forum) we try to keep discussions polite, and posts on-topic. After that is done, quite a few points of views are aired, and we all learn something. I certainly have.

I think you also have to consider that Arduino itself is an amalgamation of two different communities, software developers and hardware developers; and unless you were around in the 70's early 80's there hasn't been much crossover in the last 20 years.  Many of the questions that I see are, "I want to do XYZ with hardware 123", and most of the time there's not a good answer because no one has written a decent hardware library for 123, or if they have it includes only the most rudimentary functionality, that is difficult to expand upon without more driver development knowledge.

Without having certain hardware or using it, it's quite hard to answer many questions. For example I have encountered so many weird things with the NRF24L01+ modules, I can help with it (I also somewhat help to maintain the related libraries), but with GSM and other less common things it gets harder. Certain hardware would possibly need better tag info so that people could read more about the hardware.

Those are some awesome perspectives - if I could downvote my own post I would, based on these insights. I definitely agree that it probably is more closely linked to the huge diversity - both in terms of skillsets and platforms, than any selfish desire to keep information close to the chest. Thanks for commenting!


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Can I ask about "Blynk" in Arduino?
Can I ask questions related to Blynk in Arduino?
Blynk is an App that allows comunication between A Phone,Tablet and etc. with Arduinos and etc. Using USB or Internet (Ethernet Shield, Wifi Module and so on).

It might be easier just to ask the question :)

@Visual Micro I wanted to ask, So my Question didn't get flagged as Off-Topic by someone

The Arduino libraries and using them for sure can be asked about since they're part of the extended Arduino ecosystem.
However, I do not find these things on topic:

Using the online parts of Blynk (how to get authentication codes, password reset, dashboard-ish stuff, etc.).
The app builder (that's really not Arduino).
General history/information about the Blynk project (Kickstarter/funding info, generic support, etc.).

Using Blynk doesn't make it off topic, but we have to stay on the topic of Arduino here. Python scripts that connect to Arduino are not on topic (except in very few cases where it's messing with low level USB functions or drivers). As usual, exceptions should and will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the people voting to close/reopen.


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Lots of abandoned (and/or unanswered) questions
Would it be possible to delete questions that have no reply from the OP at least a few months or user is inactive and there are no good and useful answers.
There are quite a lot of questions that should be deleted because the OP has vanished that just clutter arduino.stackexchange.
For ex: NRF24 module - how to program arduino so that it is able to listen to 2 pipes

Simply put, if they can't be answered, they should've been closed already. Too broad is applicable if they don't have enough information in their question to narrow it down to a specific solution (you end up getting a lot of very scattered answers).
So, close questions if they can't be answered. They'll get deleted after some time automatically.

I think I can't yet vote to close questions.

I imagine you can, now. ;)

I think I indeed can, now.

I would say some caution is required. Just because the OP has vanished, it does not mean that the question is redundant/useless. I Just remember what I heard from a lecturer back at college, many moons ago:

If you have a question, but are too scared to ask it, for fear of looking the fool, then fear not. If you have thought of that question, then it is very likely that someone else has either already thought of it, and wants to ask it, or will do.

So, taking the example that you have just closed. The question may be a little unclear, due to the OP's possible poor command of the English language. It may, also, be unanswered, however, that does not mean that there is no answer in the post. In fact there are two comments, which offer short, and not in-depth, answers.
It is not the fault of the OP that the question does not have an actual answer as a posted answer. Many times one can see questions, with good answers posted as comments, for the shear quickness of getting an answer up there... The answerer may not be able to find the time to craft a perfectly worded answer, so just to get the OP on their way, the solution is posted as a comment. Often the writer of a very good comment is asked to turn that in to a answer, so that it may be accepted.
So, in short, closing a question that has answers in the comment, I feel, is a little short sighted, as someone else is probably thinking the same thing, and those comments could just give them the help that they require. I know that they have helped me in the past.
Obviously, some questions are so awful that they deserve to be scrapped, however, in this cited case, I don't believe that it is.
Also, these awful questions will generally get closed through the use of close votes. If no one has voted to close it, then it is probably not a good idea to take an executive decision to close it. Let the democracy vote the questions. As the docs say, a moderator generally has very little to do, until issues are raised. There is no need to go looking for work ;-)
Instead of closing the question, why not turn the comments into answers?

Someone could write about using two radios to listen to multiple channels at once but noone will do that (or at least has not yet done that) , plus it's always possible to get it reopened.

When reviewing unanswered questions I have been attempting to turn comments into answers. Unfortunately, that means they are answers with no up-votes so the question is still technically unanswered. And I can't accept or up-vote my own answer (even if it is really someone else's copied and pasted).

@NickGammon - I have finally fully understood your comment (better late than never), now that I have just read: "The Unanswered Questions tab shows questions that have no answers with a positive score nor an accepted answer. (That includes questions with no answers at all.)" from Why does the “Unanswered Questions” tab show questions that have answers?. I had always assumed that an up-tick was required. Pᴀᴜʟsᴛᴇʀ2 just pointed it out to me in a chat on 3DPrinting.


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Stepping down as provisional moderator

Hi everyone,
You may have noticed that I've not been active on the site for quite some time now. Life has kept me very busy, between getting married, moving house, looking for a new job, and moving house again!
Long story short, I felt it was only right that I step down as moderator, allowing someone else to take my place. I'll still pop in on occasion though, and hopefully I'll be able to contribute more regularly again at some point in the future.
In the meantime, I wish you all the best.
Regards,
-Peter

Thank you Peter for your service to Arduino Stack Exchange. I've had a good time working with you and sachleen and wish you luck in your future endeavors!

Thanks Peter for all you have done.

I'd also like to add my sincere thank you for all the hard work answering questions and moderating our stack. I hope you stick around as a regular user. All the best!

While I don't really know you that well, but would've liked to, I would still want to thank you for your efforts.

Thank you, Peter, for helping ASE to get a good, solid start.

Thanks for your work as moderator, Peter, and all the best for the future. If you have children you may have the chance to "moderate" their disputes, so I'm sure that your skills here will be put to good use. :)


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Please welcome your new pro tem mods!
As I mentioned in the Jan 2016 beta progress report, one of your moderators asked me about stepping down a little while ago because things were getting busier in his life outside of Arduino SE. Actually, I oversimplified a bit there; two mods are leaving the team this week. I'm happy to announce that two other users have stepped up to replace them as new pro tem mods, though:

Please join me in thanking Peter and sachleen for their service and welcoming Nick and Avamander!

Greeting everyone. Thanks for the honour of assisting with moderation of this site. And thanks to Peter Bloomfield and Sachleen for their work in moderating up till now. Moderators hopefully don't have to do that much, but when they do (eg. spam) it is important.

Congratulations to both of you! We really appreciate that you are stepping up to help the site grow and thrive! We will be backing you up as we go along. Cheers!

By the way, nice going, Pops! It looks like you found some Arduino heavy-weights to lead us. Well done!

I've always wondered how @NickGammon wasn't a moderator already. Moderators hopefully don't have to do that much sounds funny :) but I indeed hope you still have time to write answers and articles, as I find them very in-depth and informative.

It's good to see we are poaching the quality members for rival forums ;)