text:
Why does the migrate dialog only list Arduino Meta?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OK, very good. :)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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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.

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


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

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

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

and it is not about …

a shopping or buying recommendation

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

On topic:
Board recommendations. Make sure to include detailed information about the project you are doing and your requirements. If your question is too vague, it may be put on hold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With respect to Nick's answer:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Can't believe I missed this myself. Awesome!


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Tons of new arduino questions in SO
If you search for arduino in SO, you'll see there are tons of new questions in there. Should we flag them to be moved to Arduino SE?

Be careful with the migration - unless something is highly specific to unique aspects of Arduino or too indistinct to survive there, there are a lot more experienced embedded engineer eyeballs on SO than there are ever likely to be here, so moving questions can easily lead to fewer and lower quality answers.

I've been noticing that too, and we're getting an increasing number of migrations already. I'm naturally a little hesitant to move everything, since we're still in beta. Increasing the number of good questions here though may actually give us the momentum we need to graduate.
On balance, I'd say any new questions which are clearly Arduino-specific are probably worth flagging.
We just need to be careful to avoid moving stuff that's actually more appropriate on SO (or somewhere else).

I've always been overly critical in sub-sites, I think there are way too many with very similar charters and often find myself asking ubuntu questions in linux/unix because I know I'll get a better answer there (and it's not specifically ubuntu related). I often post OS-X and apple stuff anywhere but AskDifferent for the same reasons unless it's VERY apple specific. Arduino tends to questions in EE (if it's not microprocessor related, but they often shift it back to somewhere else). I've read many arguments both for and against a more unified SE set of sites, I personally would prefer to see a better tagging system between the sites, but there's meta discussion on that as well.
I think SE and SE sites do a fantastic job, but it's grown too big and needs to become more refined (that's just my personal opinion, and I know it's not shared by others, I do NOT mean to offend). I will still be sticking around here for my "go-to" answers. In fact, the SE sites are ALWAYS my first preference because I think more seasoned users DO do the research and make this a much more valuable tool.
If only lesser rated forums had the same level of quality control, well, I wouldn't be here so often lol
To more specifically answer your question, my view is "where is the question better answered?" Just because it has an Arduino doesn't mean EE is a better fit for the electronics side, but then again, SE-A is a much better fit where people haven't comprehended the datasheet (which we all know is hefty).
My personal view, think about where YOU would ask that same question.


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We need a way to create symbols in the Arduino meta
I posted a question to the EE stack Exchange on how to put a horizontal bar above a character.
The answer I got was to use MathJax, which I had never heard of. The markup in that post works perfectly in the EE SE, but not in the Arduino SE.
Can we get something like that for this forum? We're always posting about digital pins, and frequently need to interface with chips like ADCs, flip-flops, and clocked logic chips that have inverted pins like (not)enable, (not)busy, or (not)q (where all of those things should have a bar over them.
Seems like a facility for math markup would be a boon on this Arduino board.
Here's the latest thread (on 16 bit ADCs) where I needed this.

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

https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2445/as-we-get-more-advanced-in-our-use-of-arduinos-in-ever-more-complex-ways-it-wou

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

https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2445/as-we-get-more-advanced-in-our-use-of-arduinos-in-ever-more-complex-ways-it-wou


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What to do with my question which contained a wrong premise, as shown later?
I have asked a question:
What happens to the sketch / memory when Arduino is powered off?
In one comment a likely solution was found (DS18B20 returns 85 deg C after power up), which mostly turns the question moot. The question did not contain enough details (it did not mention at all DS18B20), it was "loaded" with my assumption the issue is with the Arduino memory.
I am not sure what to do with the question now. Should I delete it completely, or is there some way to salvage it - to edit it so that it contains enough detail so that the solution related to DS18B20 is more apparent? Or should I keep it, as it is, as even in current form it is not that bad, and ask a new question about DS18B20 after reset behaviour?

Should I delete it completely[...]?

No. Technically, you cannot delete it since there are answers.
First of all, do you have your question solved? If so, accept an answer/post an answer/comment, upvote the answers, and move on with your life. If no, then edit it. You're just adding some small details...
If you're worried about the existing answer, I'd say maybe add a comment if you feel like you should. It's still a valid answer to the question, although it didn't exactly solve it. It did tell you that a normal board should be fine and that it is something else.
I think adding a new question would attract a lot of similar answers.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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How relevant is Arduino SE?
I know this may seem as a troll, while the beta is going on and the community is building up, but I'm sincerely wondering how relevant is a site such as Arduino SE (same question applies to the Raspberry Pi Q&A site). The SE network has begun with Q&A sites oriented by "concerns" not by technologies: SO is all about programing problems, SU is about computer/application usage problems, SF is about system/networking problems.
Then you got a Q&A about apple iStuff questions, another about Unix questions (but no MS/Windows Q&A, though). And now, we've got a RPi Q&A and an Arduino Q&A community... So in my point of view the whole Knowledge Base aspect of SO is being diluated and redundant.
So let's get to my point, most of the questions I saw on the site could be moved elsewhere:

Why can I not use pointers instead of array with PROGMEM is a perfect example of a SO question (and is actually a duplicate of that answer) ;
Digital IO pin as ground is a good example of a EE question
What are the FLASH_ARRAY/FLASH_TABLE macros in this code?, SO again
How can I sense very high temperatures with Arduino? is again a topic for EE SE
How to trigger an alarm when toilet paper is low? would be a good question for EE SE, or maybe it could be a good example of the need of a "DIY"/"hacking" Q&A community site. Somehow the "opposite" of the reverse engineering site.

In the end, when I get through the list of all the questions I see no questions that are really 100% pure arduino topics. The questions could have been asked either on stackoverflow, on electrical engineering, on programming, and if we were closing the beta, I'm pretty sure we could move 99% of the questions on the other existing sites...
Maybe the only Q&A community site that's missing is a general abstract "DIY/hacking" community that given a problematic suggests a hardware and software solution to solve it, giving the best options to solve this problem.
In the end, Arduino is a nice prototyping tool, but it's far from being the only one, and it's not good at doing everything. The ST, PIC or MSP boards have their strong points as well, and shouldn't be excluded by the name of the Q&A forum. The only way I'd consider an arduino Q&A site, would be to turn into an arduino-tag aggregator from the other existing sites.
Reading this topic, makes me feel that SE/EE has a problem in the way it is working (when they downvote/offtopic arduino questions), where actually the tag system can be used for filtering out or favoriting the newbies/arduino questions. And I've been answering questions on SO about arduinos, and saw no real problems over there.
And the shopping questions gap should not be filled by a product-oriented site (because the problem stays with the ST, PIC or MSP prototyping boards which also have their own environment of shield-like/accessories), but with a "DIY/hacking" community that would actually fill the void between EE and SO, and be a good place for the "varied" audience a site such as this one here would get. And in the same time I fear that questions for embedded design will be made offtopic on SO or EE to be moved on other product sites, whereas questions about 100% alternative hardwares to arduino or RPi will still be offtopic on those sites, while not gathering a community big enough to build a product Q&A community.
And with new Arduino board like the Due, the Yun, or Intel's Galileo, the gap between Arduino and RPi/cubie/beaglebone boards is getting more and more blurry.
So, here am I asking your opinion:

how relevant do you think is Arduino SE?
don't you think it'd be a better idea to create a "hacking/DIY/inventing" community to talk about ideas and suggest paths to build a solution to a problem and fill the gap that product-oriented sites like RPi and Arduino do?
how to deal with alternatives platforms, like MSP/STM/PIC for MCUs or Beaglebone/Cubieboard/Gooseberry/OlinuXino... boards?

In the end, I'm here to share my knowledge, and that's my main motivation in participating to whatever Q&A site, the hackerspaces ML I'm on, or even on IRC. But I strongly believe that a concern-oriented Q&A site is way better than a product-oriented Q&A site. If the arduino community want to build a support forum, they can make their own Q&A site like the Jolla community did using AskBot.

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/65915/diy-hacking?referrer=dLTDSpB0SFUTXhZRMWFTrw2

@TheDoctor http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/64785/making-and-building

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55835/home-automation as well

Out of curiosity why do question the relevance of RaspPi.SE?  That site seems to be rather popular/active.

I'm not participating at all on RPi.SE, and I don't like the RPi for many educated reasons. But I'm a user of the beaglebone, the cubieboards and a few others which makes me "an expert" (I mean a guy who can answers lots of questions because it's my daily job), for which I still have to ask/answer questions on SO, SU/SE and EE. And now that the latest high end Arduinos are leaving the MCU world to the OMAP world, making them RPi-like boards.

and the "paper roll" question is a good example of a bad XY-problem question. I have a problem, I want to solve it, it's hardware+software, so I ask on Arduino.SE. What if the best solution is using a RPi-like board? or another MCU platform..?

@zmo But if I own an Arduino board, then I am constrained to a platform.

it's not because I own a screw driver that I shall use it as a hammer!

Yes, I don't understand this splintering either. The original site, Stack Overflow, was specifically not split into a Java site, a .NET site, a Python site, a Scala site, a COBOL site, a Forth site, a PHP site, an SQL site, a jQuery site, a JavaScript site, an Android programming site, a C++ site, a Ruby site, a Perl site, a Flex site, etc., instead relying on tagging for some degree of separation (e.g. excluding the horrible PHP questions from view).

http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/questions/13763/can-we-make-a-general-diy-site

zmo: That's like saying that someone should be open to using a CNC machine instead of a drill press. If one user wants to know how to do something with one platform, then they should do it with that platform if it's possible. //cc @asheesh

@AnnonomusPenguin - often times an experienced operator of a milling machine is precisely the person to explain why trying that operation on a drill press is highly dangerous.  Problems are frequently general cross vendor technologies, and by in effect "hiding" questions here, lower quality answers tend to result.

@Chris I agree totally that if it's not possible to tell the OP that. For example, if they want to do a true AI bot with Arduino, then we should inform them that that's simply too much for a little AVR chip. However, if they want to do a simple web page with Arduino (which is very possible and fairly simple) and already own $100 worth of Arduino parts, there's no reason to make them use a RPi

anyway, I think we can correlate the spread of stack overflow topics on other Q&A forums having an effect on the lower quality of questions and answers everybody is witnessing on the main site.

I completely disagree with you. There are plenty of questions that wouldn't fit on any other site:

Arduino Lego Robot Shopping question!
Serial data showing up weird

Serial data showing up weird is not a real question, even though I do not deny it could be useful, I'm not sure the way it is being asked will actually help people looking for answers: this is an example of "serial data showing up weird" question on another topic which shows how differently things can be asked. ~zmo

This question was asked a while ago and it seems like it was to set good examples for good formatted questions. By the way, there is no problem with answering your own question, it is even encouraged.
Where can I find a central repository of all available Arduino libraries?

is totally borderline imho, and even on arduino.SE I would tag that question as "too broad". And btw, there's the new library format being worked on that will lead into a pypi/apt-like registry for arduino libraries. This is being discussed and will be ultimately solved ~zmo

Borderline where? Not here... you must mean on SO. Exactly my point. We have a little corner of the web that we shape, we don't need to follow the typical site pattern. Also, it's not solved now, which is when users need it.
Are there any signal smoothing libraries for Arduino?
Are there any good and maintained libraries for using DS2482 I2C to 1-Wire bridge?

well I would tag that as too broad/primarly opinion based… Because in the end the answer to the question is where the OP went: update other's code or write it yourself. ~zmo

There's no harm in the user wanting a library that he/she can't find and then, after finding out there's none, writing their own and posting it. You don't close a question because they solved it themselves.

These are some borderline ones that may be acceptable if they're worded correctly, but they wouldn't get nearly as much attention as here:

What are the steps involved in porting an Arduino library? (Borderline)
What are (or how do I use) the power saving options of the Arduino to extend battery life? (Borderline)

that one would be a perfect fit on SO, or maybe because it may need some datasheet reading, on the embedded developers Q&A site still in proposal ~zmo

On any other site it'd probably be downvoted until the question falls to the center of the earth. One more comment... You expect a new user to be able to read a datasheet? I'm not saying everyone couldn't, but many can't. Sure, a datasheet is easy to read when you get used to it, but there's no reason that users should be left in the dark because they don't know how to read a datasheet.
What are the steps involved in porting an Arduino library? (Borderline)

A couple more responses:

but I don't see the coherence of multiplying product sites on Stack Exchange, whereas we're not addressing all the concerns.

SO it getting so big that it's surprising it hasn't turned into a wasteland yet. Even some SE folks have said so. Our network needs to expand and attract new users.

But the Arduino stack [exchange] is full of overhead and boilerplate, to make it nicer, but that in the end makes it difficult to move from the "funny hack" to something used more "seriously". There are other frameworks that are worth being included in the Q&A realm the same way you guys do for Arduino, and there are other platforms on which you can run the Arduino framework that are not 1:1 copycats of the Arduino.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. There are other frameworks that are worth being included in the Q&A realm the same way you guys do for Arduino Why don't you propose some on Area 51? Are you saying that this should be expanded? It's hard to create a focused site with so many broad topics included: especially with many different levels of users (i.e. beginner vs advanced).
[Edited 4/4/14 to update questions and add new content]

Another note, there was a lot of decision making at SE whether to allow this or not. Last Arduino beta, it failed for a reason you're proposing. We would've gotten shut down way before this if there wasn't unique territory here. Of course, there's going to be overlap on other sites... EE and SO have some overlap. That's inevitable. A better question would be how can we avoid overlap.

[Comment by me earlier.]

Posting this as an answer as it is too long for a comment, and I don't feel like re-iterating the same points again. A fair part of this debate occurred on the previous proposal page and has been going on for a year.

https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9084/whats-wrong-with-ee
Will a site proposal that covers a subset of Stack Overflow work?
https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2656/what-will-be-the-benefits-in-having-a-separate-arduino-site
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9112/what-should-be-the-scope-of-the-arduino-site
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9969/differences-with-ee
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9218/if-this-isnt-a-duplicate-of-ee-might-want-to-consider-elevating-fewer-electron
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12390/why-not-just-combine-the-arduino-proposal-with-the-existing-raspberry-pi-site
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12432/why-is-arduino-a-proposal-separate-from-embedded-programming-and-design
https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12891/allowing-general-avr-microcontroller-questions-on-arduino-site

ok, let's answer to your opinions and elaborate on my point:
@AnnonomusPerson: I can't disagree more with you when you say There are plenty of questions that wouldn't fit on any other site:

Webserver On Arduino Even though this question includes the keyword « Arduino » which makes it specific to that platform, it could be asked on a non existing Q&A about hardware and software hacking that would be a balance to the proposal of the "embedded dev" proposal ;
How can I communicate Ardunio to Matlab that question could have perfectly been asked on SO, even though it would have been closed by lack of reseach of the OP and because there are dupes:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5003548/interfacing-arduino-with-matlab-for-image-processing/5004931
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18795171/matlab-and-arduino-does-anyone-know-how-to-establish-a-connection

Serial data showing up weird is not a real question, even though I do not deny it could be useful, I'm not sure the way it is being asked will actually help people looking for answers: this is an example of "serial data showing up weird" question on another topic which shows how differently things can be asked ;
Where can I find a central repository of all available Arduino libraries? is totally borderline imho, and even on arduino.SE I would tag that question as "too broad". And btw, there's the new library format being worked on that will lead into a pypi/apt-like registry for arduino libraries. This is being discussed and will be ultimately solved ;
Are there any good and maintained libraries for using DS2482 I2C to 1-Wire bridge? well I would tag that as too broad/primarly opinion based… Because in the end the answer to the question is where the OP went: update other's code or write it yourself.
What are the steps involved in porting an Arduino library? it would be, imho, a borderline but acceptable question on SO ;
How can I adapt the DallasTemperature library to accept another 1-Wire class? that one would be a perfect fit on SO, or maybe because it may need some datasheet reading, on the embedded developers Q&A site still in proposal ;
What are (or how do I use) the power saving options of the Arduino to extend battery life? basically, this question is laziness of reading the datasheet where all that is well explained, though it could be asked on the non existing hardware and software hacking Q&A, or the embedded dev Q&A that is to come, or even on EE.SE.

it took me more than two minutes to get to the point, and yes, it can be fun to create an arduino Q&A, but I don't see the coherence of multiplying product sites on Stack Exchange, whereas we're not addressing all the concerns.
@AsheeshR, I hope that you will be able to build a community here, and maybe become the official Q&A of Arduino, I'm not trying to mine your project, guys… But I think that Arduino is just a trendy and nice brigde between hardware and software world.
But the Arduino stack is full of overhead and boilerplate, to make it nicer, but that in the end makes it difficult to move from the "funny hack" to something used more "seriously". There are other frameworks that are worth being included in the Q&A realm the same way you guys do for Arduino, and there are other platforms on which you can run the Arduino framework that are not 1:1 copycats of the Arduino.

to value more my point about this forum, what to think about that question which is talking about the PIC32 using the Arduino framework and pin compatible with arduino, but asking something about sleep modes which is not handled by the Arduino framework. It's not a good fit on EE or SO, but it's neither on Arduino.SE! It deserves the embedded dev forum proposal.

First of all, calling our site a forum is insulting to many users across the whole network of Q&A sites. That's like calling an espresso machine a drip coffee maker. :) Another note, there was a lot of decision making at SE whether to allow this or not. Last Arduino beta, it failed for a reason you're proposing. We would've gotten shut down way before this if there wasn't unique territory here. Of course, there's going to be overlap on other sites... EE and SO have some overlap. That's inevitable. A better question would be how can we avoid overlap. (Edited my answer a few times)

well, coming from a strong usenet background, where many forums are dign ancestors of SE's Q&As, I can't consider calling a Q&A site an insult. The web-only php-bb like "things" where an insult to the whole concept of communication! I'm not going to fight against a moving train, I think I made my point quite clear, and I don't think I'll be able to accept any answer, except if there's one answer that gets a lot more points than the others ;-) About the how can we avoid overlap I think the answer would be to keep on separating Q&As by concern and improve the tag filtering accross sites! :-)

Hey! I'm not the one who get's offended by that... although most people just like users using the technical term. Your point IMHO isn't clear. There is a ton of overlap between SO and EE. SO is getting to big: half of the Arduino questions are about circuits and they aren't closed or answered. They "fall between the couch cushions." There's still unique questions here that can't fall into any other site (including, but not limited to shopping questions). Also, SO isn't focused on programming errors, it's about coding in general.


text:
Are there any guidelines/limitations for someone that promotes the company he works in?
I noticed today this reply which seemed like a biicode promotion, and after checking the user profile I saw another answer referring to the same company.
A look in the profile details of the user showed that she is working for the specific company, and based on the fact that her only two replies are referring to his company I wonder if there are rules regarding the issue of promoting a company.

Software Engineer at biicode

and in the linked website

I'm Julia S.Simon and I'm currently working at biicode.
Biicode is a spanish startup that aims to lower entry barriers for
  programmers making the hard stuff onf configuring project,
  dependencies and build for them.
Contact me if you need more information, or visit us and try it for
  free!

Do not use signature, taglines, or greetings.
Every post you make is already “signed” with your standard user card,
  which links directly back to your user page. If you use an additional
  signature or tagline, it will be removed to reduce noise in the
  questions and answers.
Your user page belongs to you — fill it with information about your
  interests, links to stuff you’ve worked on, or whatever else you like!
Avoid overt self-promotion.
The community tends to vote down overt self-promotion and flag it as
  spam. 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.
If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product
  or website, you're probably here for the wrong reasons. Our
  advertising rates are quite reasonable; contact our ad sales team for
  details. We also offer free community promotion ads for open source
  projects and non-profit organizations.

From the help docs
If you see this, edit it (if needed), and post a comment saying that you need to clarify the relationship in the answer, since many people don't read profiles.

While I cannot see the answers at present, in my experience of moderation over the past year, I have seen that sometimes people really don't know about Stack Exchange policies on self promotions. They are genuinely trying to answer the question, and an answer sometimes does happen to be an off-site resource being developed by the OP. As long as the post isn't blatant spam ("Buy handbags CHEAP HERE!!") and is an attempt to answer the question, the first response should be to comment and then delete with the not an answer flag.
Also, note that the spam flag comes with many network wide restrictions on the user account, along with a -100 penalty, so it should not be used lightly and certainly not be used for something that could be considered a valid attempt to answer, albeit poorly written or sounding like an advertisement.

A moderator can copy/paste the actual deleted reply and add it as a quote in my question if that helps the discussion.

I second this opinion. Yesterday I could briefly see one of these answers to my question, but couldn't retrieve it later on. I remembered the name of the site so I looked for it -I had no time to check it thoroughly though- and that seemed to be a valid attempt to answer my question. I would like to mention that "with great power comes great responsibilities" and moderators should maybe use this power sparingly and open a door for discussion first. In general, I think that "shoot first, talk after" behavior may be harmful to this beta and potentially turn newcomers away.

@jfpoilpret There was no other activity besides a comment, and both answers were advertising her company... only disclosed in their profile (not really read). 1 answer wasn't even a true answer to the question. There's also a policy about not doing all self-promotion. It seemed a little forced. I don't know of a place online where it is acceptable to just promote your product. Can Google place flyers on cars if they didn't know that it was illegal to do so in some areas? No, and the user has 18 SE accounts with 580+ rep on SO. She's not new.

Honestly, do you really think ALL SE users are aware of SE policies? I'd be surprised if this number could already reach 10%

@jfp It's no new concept... It's actually illegal to put flyers on cars. Why could you put ads as answers online? Most users don't know because it's not applicable to them. And 35+% have fewer rep than her.

@AnnonomusPerson My post questions whether the "ads" were really ads. If the ad was relevant, then it could easily be rephrased to look more like an answer and less like an ad. While we don't want bad content on the site, we also don't want to delete everything without giving a chance to the OP. And biicode seems to be a relevant answer to the repo question. If the answer was just a link to a blog listing a set of tools, then that could be deleted as a link-only answer. But, this was? a link directly to the tool itself, which is however lacking, a valid answer.


text:
Blog / Project of the month?
It might be a bit early for things like this, but (since there are so many interesting and surprising things being done with Arduino) how about some kind of rolling community interaction and showcasing a bit like photography.SE's photo of the week, where people post interesting Arduino projects they've made or heard about, and the most upvoted every month / fortnight / week gets showcased in, say, a short blog post where the project's author or a volunteer explains why it's interesting?
Something like this done right could build traffic and activity that turns into better questions and answers, and more loyal enthusiastic users.

There might be loads of blogs and showcase sites out there that do this sort of showcasing really well already which we might not want to compete with - in which case, this question might be a good place to drop some links.
If there are a few but they're inconsistent or infrequently updated, doing something like a "project of the month" based on a continuously open place to post submissions could be a nice way to focus attention on this site as a hub, while also promoting other sites with (hopefully popular) links through.

What's the point of linking users out of the site? Why can't we hold a contest?
I love the idea. However, I don't really know how valuable it would be to link users out of the site unless we just wanted recurring visitors. Not to mention, it'll be link-only answers galore. A better solution would be to have a user to interact with the site, giving the user interest in the site and the content.
One thing that we would have to think about is the logistical standpoint. To do such a project, it might be a little non-SE style to make many posts that are too localised. We'll have to draw a definite line on how far is too far. For example:

How do I make a robot that is 5x2x3, follows only green light, and plays a song when it can't find any green light? Way too pushy.
How do I mobilize by robot? Much better.

A "series" might be better. (See Q&A Series Ideas.) That way, it won't be too localised, it won't be able to be a link-only answer, and it would generate valuable traffic, not just someone who visits the site once a month. However, it is up to the poster to decide on it it's too localised or not.

One note: we should open another thread on the logistics if we want to start this.
Maybe we could start this on Arduino Day 2014?

While I wholly support the idea, it may be too early to direct attention on a blog before we even establish a core community of users for the site itself. The site is about Q&A first and foremost, and that needs a fair bit of focus for now.
Even the Photography contest you link to was started almost 2 years after the site went into its public beta.
A once a week or month event in chat would be a good starting point to move towards a full-fledged vote and blog event. In fact, I posted this idea on another discussion.

I like the idea of a one-off event with plenty of build-up time, which could evolve into something regular if it goes well. I might suggest Meta rather than chat to start with as it's easier to link to, easier to browse/compare entries, and better shows off the SE format for any experienced Arduino people who aren't used to SE (i.e. ideal new users).


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:
Wire tag vs. wires tag
Wire is useful. "Wires" as a tag is not. I've edited the question that has wires and removed it (admittedly its replacement, wiring, is almost as bad a choice) but I still can't attach wire to a question about Wire. I believe someone may need to nuke wires directly, but is there any way to prevent this from happening in the future?

No one really can nuke wires. There is a system background process that is ran daily that cleans up tags without any questions.

Tag it wire-library so you can get it past the system (and it's much less ambiguous)

As far as what to do to prevent this from happening, I did this this:

Synonymize wires ← wiring, because someone wouldn't type "wiring" when referring to the library. The system will automatically rename everything tagged "wiring" to "wires."

This way, if someone types wires or wiring, they will get wiring. If they type wire, it will have an option for "wire-library" and "wiring." This will fix the problem.
We should leave wire alone. It's way to ambiguous to be synonymized to one of the two types of wire.

I have tagged the question [tag:wire-library] and have edited the tag to provide some useful information.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Question updated)

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

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

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

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

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

Does up/down-voting bump the question?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
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).


text:
Should we ban "how to hack XYZ" from our site?
I can picture questions like this popping up everywhere:

How do I hack a treadmill?
How do I hack my alarm clock?
How do I hack my garage door opener?

Some of those things aren't really meant to be hacked. We already have one question like this: Using the Waspmote Sensor Board. It isn't that bad alone, but questions like this could add up and really clutter our site.
The treadmill is already on EE (answered my me). Some devices that use AC shouldn't really be messed with, especially from users who don't even know that it is dangerous, or how to do it in the first place. However, I do believe that some of these "hacking questions" may be useful. For example, should we allow, "How do I simulate pressing a physical push button on a PCB?" What should we do about this?
Edit: After a while, questions like this seem to have died down. This doesn't seem like a problem now.

It's hard to answer a question that targets a specific device. Hacking could also mean illegal modifications in some cases, and those should definitely be banned.

@TheDoctor Definitely not allowed for illegal.

The example questions you give are poor examples of the kinds of questions we want to see on the site and should not be allowed.
Questions should ask something specific. Like this:

How can I log the distance and time from my treadmill to an SD card using an Arduino?

There are two parts to this question:

How do I interface my treadmill with Arduino?
How do I log data to SD card with Arduino?

We can clearly help with the second question.
The first part of the question may  or may not be off topic, depending on how much detail the person has provided (schematics, datasheets), what kind of effort they've put into solving the problem themselves, and the scope of the problem.
tl;dr: it depends on the question. Maybe we can answer part of it and another part is better for another site on the SE network.


text:
User reputation leagues broken?
It looks to me as if the user reputation leagues are broken. To access them, one would go to the user list and hit the link labelled "weekly / monthly / quarterly reputation leagues" at the bottom.
Is that something that should already work at this point in time, or only once the Arduino SE community becomes a permanent one?

I think it's just caching... seriously though, I don't think it has data right now, as [softwarerecs.se]'s reputation leagues are up... so maybe wait a day/days/week?

The link is now there!

@TheGuywithTheHat The link was always there, it just doesn't work so far.

The reputation leagues are now up and running.
http://stackexchange.com/leagues/288/week/arduino/

Private beta is not the best time to concentrate on reputation and other competitive things. They are meant to build a critical mass of questions, answers, and users with a bit of experience in the site. I would imagine that the leagues won't start until public beta. As far as I know, we've only been in public beta a few hours, so I would give it a bit more time.
When they do start, though, they should be at http://stackexchange.com/leagues/272.
Edit: The link is now there at the bottom of the Users page. It goes to http://stackexchange.com/leagues/288/week/arduino, which does not currently exist.

Of course, those things are not very relevant, neither now nor later. This was not meant as a complaint, but rather I simply wanted to bring it to everyone's attention (or more correctly the people taking care of those matters) to ensure that once this community becomes permanent, it is fixed to prevent others from "real" complaints. And yes: We are officially in public beta since a few hours.


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

I'm not surprised the question was closed:

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
What should our "policy" be for questions that wouldn't survive on EE but aren't exactly fit for this site?
I recently posted When should I use a transistor, mosfet, and when should I use a relay? to see how the community would react. (Only 3 views so far so not really a big reaction yet, as you can see.) Here's the controversy:

Why it should stay here (obviously my own opinions here, add yours in the comments):

That person would get outrageous downvotes from EE members because it is a simple question
This site is for beginners and trying to get them to use Stack Exchange
EE might refuse to answer it
It still is applicable (if they do ask how to control it)

Why it should be migrated:

It doesn't have to do much with Arduino besides if someone asks "How do I control it with Arduino"
There would be overlap with EE.SE

The number of reasons for keeping it outnumbers the migrating, but those two reasons are very big. I doubt that the Stack Exchange team wants us creating duplicate sites with much overlap: it may be a matter of time until advanced questions start coming up here.
I do know that this is similar to other questions on meta but no real policy of on-the-fence questions has been established. What do you think we should do? How can we prevent this from happening on a daily basis if they aren't fit for Arduino.SE?

In my opinion there are quite a few beginners questions on EE.SE. What is usually frowned upon is when a question obviously has not been researched and misses trivial knowledge before being asked.

We are looking at this wrong.
This question When should I use a transistor, mosfet, and when should I use a relay? clearly shows knowledge on the part of the OP of basic EE and is not entirely relevant to Arduinos in the way it is phrased. It should either be re-written, migrated, or closed.
How a beginner to Arduino-verse would ask the same question is:

I am trying to control A  with Arduino B. The power requirements for A are this but B provides something else. How do I control B using A without burning out A?

Or

The control current for A seems far higher than the safe value of B. What method can I use to throttle the current and/or control the current input to B through A?

In either of these cases, the question highlights that the OP has a problem, has maybe tried to solve it, and most likely lacks the specific knowledge or terminology to reach the solution to the problem themselves without a nudge in the right direction.
These questions, and this audience, is one of the reasons that this site is up and I feel we should keep such questions within our scope. The usual restrictions of basic research, clear problem and progress made should be applied and questions found lacking should be closed. The level of difficulty should not solely be a parameter on the basis of which questions should be closed.

This is very right.  The "example question," as written, should be migrated (and is why I wrote what I did in my answer).  But I agree that the examples you've listed above should be on-topic.

I am one of the (as of now) 3 people who have voted to close the question as belonging on EE.SE.
This site is not "EEBeginners.SE," and we should not try to become that.  Especially in private beta, we need to stay away from making this site a perfect subset of EE.
The question, as written, doesn't relate to Arduinos in the least.  Even just tagging on "How would I control one with an Arduino?" doesn't really make it obviously on-topic--it doesn't focus primarily on Arduino usage, and relates more to choosing between electrical components.
Something I had to come to terms with last Arduino beta period was that not all questions deserve to have a home on Stack Exchange.  Certain "beginning EE" questions might never be accepted on SE because of the culture of EE.SE.  Just because the question isn't accepted there doesn't mean it is on topic here.

You do bring up a few good points: there may never be a home on SE for some of these questions, and we don't want to be Beginners EE.SE either. BTW I cast the final close vote. Although it is my own question, I just tried it to see if it would provide good answers that wouldn't come up on EE. It, however, would've been good on EE too. I'm going to try to see if I can get the post locked for reference, or if it should be deleted.


text:
When does a question ask for too much information/too specific, making it useful to a limited number of users?
This Arduino SE community has a more laid back scope than most sites. We have a fair number of shopping questions, which aren't allowed on most other sites. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't close a question if it's asking for too much information. I don't mind helping people out, but I hate when a question gets focused on such a small audience that it's only useful to the OP and one other person.
For example, Creating a wireless remote was asked a few minutes ago. Should we refuse these questions and require the OP to break them down into smaller groups? It's asking about:

Does this board fit my needs?
What should I use for Bluetooth?
How would I code this?

That seems like it's useful to only one person: the OP. I feel the OP has good intentions, but we don't want to get a lot of questions that are this specific. I personally feel that this should be closed and then either split or edited by the OP to focus the question. I didn't want to close it because I felt that closing this might spark a little controversy, and I wanted to get the community's input.
How should we handle this? I don't know if all of the parts would be a good fit for our site, but I don't know how to really tell the OP that in a nice way. They need help, but this doesn't seem to fit the theme of other SE sites. Should we allow this type of question on our site? It would help gain newbies, but other sites have abandoned this practice for practical reasons a long time ago. However, it seems like we need to allow some of this type of question so we don't "scare" off new users.
Another question that might have a limited audience is specific board recommendations. IMHO the consensus was that you can't which board would fit [insert purpose], but you can ask what differences between boards.
Edit:
There's no debate if that question should be closed. It needs to be broken up. What I really want to discuss here is if such open ended questions would be good for the site. We shouldn't leave them open just to get more questions. If we feel these types of questions, such as "would this board be good for my purpose?", would be constructive then they should be left. I, personally think they are too specific, and the how to ask page even says to make it applicable to more than one or two people. Like I said earlier, I want to know what the community thinks (and document the policy here if any confusion were to arise.)

I've used SE for some time now, but only signed up when the Arduino section was established. In my opinion there is the official Arduino site which caters for the advice and recommendations type of question, and SE has built up it's reputation by being a straight forward Q&A site. Look at the 'Hot Network' questions down the right hand side of the screen, all precise questions and not a lot of latitude (embellishment maybe) with the answers they will receive.

So you're suggesting that we don't allow these questions? Where do you think we should draw the line You're right: we have built up a reputation for being straightforward, but that doesn't mean we can't do this in a straightforward way...

I don't think questions where everybody who is signed up can give a different, yet valid, answer should be allowed. The questions need to be specific is perhaps what I'm trying to say. In the initial example, the questions are too vague. What I think is a good piece of hardware you may have had a nightmare with...

Honestly I find the arduino site poor in terms of recommendations; it looks more like a list of stuff you may use, with not much further explanations or experience. If you want deeped insight then you need to check the forum which is very big mess in general.

SE sites are supposed to be experts sites, hence even if someone has a specific question that may be useful only to him, this question is worth answering as any other question (this is my personal viewpoint).
Also, how can you be so sure that a given question would be interesting to just the OP and nobody else? No one ever knows.
I would also like to add that, given the current number of new questions created per day, the time has not come yet when we should wonder if we must limit this number further.
Since Arduino.SE beta is still far from the expected achievements, I would rather avoid too much censorship on questions or answers: we must attract people here, both people who have questions and those who can provide answers should not be turned away for some reason that may sound obscure to them (at least to newcomers).
Make no mistake: I don't say any question or answer can be left as is even though it may be not "good", but I just say that we should relax a little bit our expectations on questions and answers "quality", given that such "quality" assessment is really much subjective in general.
For me closing a question is like using an H bomb to try to cure a pandemia; there are many other ways to make a question (or answer by the way) better:

add comments to suggest changes to the OP (a lot of us are doing that already)
based on comments, directly edit the question if the OP did not do it yet (I do it sometimes)
downvote the question if its quality does not improve after several days
threaten the OP (in comments)
close the question

Please note that I find it pityful when I see comments where a moderator says "welcome" and then a couple of hours the same moderator requests to close the same question.
My conclusion is that this site needs a graduated response to poor quality.

we must attract people here... [don't close things that aren't allowed on other sites] I totally disagree. If we have to allow lower quality content to get new users, then we're doing something wrong. We won't graduate if we only get the expected numbers by allowing low quality content. That'll never happen. Sure, I don't think we should turn off as many users as possible, but now that I look at it more, it seems too broad and partially opinion based. Part of the how to ask is make it relevant to others.

You did not read my answer carefully, I said quality is subjective; my view of qualit for questions and answers is obviously lower than yours; it seems YOU are always overreacting to all questions and answers that may not be of topnotch quality. As a moderator, I think you should be more... moderate!

Dully acknowledged; you're right. There are other tools that could be used. However, other members of the community agree with me. It got closed recently. Also, the community has powers to close/reopen at will, so we should use it.


text:
Redesigning Help Docs/Tour - Part Two: Full Site Scope Definition
This post is on behalf of all of the mods.
This is designed to be a sequel to this post:

Let's customize our tour section!

To be a successful Stack Exchange site, we not only have to ask good question and have a good user base, we need to make it easy for new users to grow our community. The easiest way to do this is with help documents and other faq posts on meta.
The biggest problem (besides question quality) is off topic questions. Site scope is fairly easy for most people, but there are a couple of grey areas that are complicated for me. I can't imagine how confusing it must be for a new user when asking a question in this 'grey area' and learning SE's policies on duplicates, accepting, comments, and scope in general.
Moderators have special tools for edtiting certain parts of the site. We can edit the tour (as specified in the "part one") and one page of the help center. Here's what it says:

What topics can I ask about here?
Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.
If your question is not specifically on-topic for Arduino Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.

That's the standard cookie-cutter template. It's not really that descriptive. I think we should preserve it, or reword it. it seems to be a
The following is a draft of what we should change the help center to. You can submit an answer if you would like to suggesting changes. I'm no wordsmith myself, but us three mods feel it's pretty good. You can also suggest other things to add (a meta link would be fine with a little text) or, if you disagree with a bullet, feel free to either: a.) post an answer or b.) ask another question on meta and link it.

Before you post a question, please look around $SiteName to see if your question has been asked before. If you've already asked this on another site, please don't ask it again. Either flag it for moderator attention and request migration to $SiteName or delete it on the other site and re-ask it here. Also note that it’s okay to ask and answer your own question.
Here at $SiteName we have specific criteria to determine if a question is fit for our site. If after reviewing the following list you're still not sure, visit Meta $SiteName, a site to ask about $SiteName.
On topic:

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

Off topic:

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

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

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

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

If your question is not specifically on-topic for $SiteName, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area51, the place of where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.

Upvote this if you agree that we should change it to the draft posted (original post).
Downvote this if you agree that we should not change it to the draft posted (original post).
This is just a community wiki post designed to get an unbiased consensus of what you think we should do. Some people might upvote the main post just because they agree that it should be changed, but want a revised version. If you disagree, either add another answer or vote on an existing answer to bring up why you want it to be changed. If any major edits are made, I'll delete and recreate this post so we can reset the vote.


text:
When should we close electronics questions?
One question that has paticuarly caught my eye is Using multiple laptop battery packs to power everything. It seems more like about batteries than Arduino. The OP doesn't even mention if he's using an Arduino, just that he's building a robot and his question was rejected on EE.
Although the OP never mentioned it is using Arduino, he probably is to post it here. Still, why would it be acceptable to make it on topic by saying it's for an Arduino project? On SO you can't ask about an Excel spreadsheet if you say "it's my budget for buying hardware so I can code."
This is not to decide the future of that post, it is to make a clear policy of when an electronics question should be closed. This is an essential part of our scope and I feel like we need to get this clarified before moving on to more important issues. What should we do?

It can be a tough call - in the course of writing an answer for http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/1490/calculating-location-with-4-piezos I was very tempted to flag it as unrelated to arduino.  But ultimately, I realized that the ATmega A/D would be a serious limitation - so in a way it does.

For that specific question, the OP mentioned he asked on EE first but it was deemed off-topic there 5I really wonder why by the way). You're wrong when you say the OP does not mention Arduino, he did it in his very first sentence where he mentioned he's building a robot with multiple Arduinos.

Some people treat Arduino as the hobby/amateur electronics SE so anything that wouldn't belong in EE but mentions Arduino goes here.
We need to make a decision:
Accept the fact that not every question is appropriate in one SE or another. There will be questions that do not belong anywhere. Questions like this would be closed as off-topic because they have almost nothing to do with Arduino.
OR
Let this community be amateur electronics where we help with all aspects of projects that involve Arduino.
I'm in favor of the first option. I think we, as mods, need to draft a "What topics can I ask about?" post and let the community make suggestions on changing it.

For the post, it's in the help center, but ideally we should have one large thread where people can suggest scope changes as an answer. Also, for option number one, where would the voltage regulator question stand? Off topic? I kinda like this rule of thumb: "If you don't need to know anything about Arduino, then it's off topic." However, that might be a little too tight of a scope...

Yeah, we have to limit the scope while ensuring we aren't restricting it too much.

There is a place for embedded electronics questions, Embedded.SE or EP&D for short. Perhaps you can add us to your migration path. Questions about embedded hardware and software are on topic. Questions about user space software (for ex., Android and iPhone 'apps') are largely off topic.
That being said, the specific question the OP referenced would be on topic at EP&D, even though the (as of now unedited) questions does in fact state that he is using 'multiple' Arduinos to control the robot. It has been a debate on whether or not certain questions are on topic at EE.SE, but the fact is the community there only wants certain types of questions on their site, hence the need for EP&D.


text:
Let's customize our tour section!

The Arduino Stack Exchange Tour Page

There are a few fields that we can update and change in that page. Here are the things we can change:
1.)

Arduino Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for developers of open-source hardware and software that is compatible with Arduino. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about arduino.

2.)

How to prevent unicorns from eating daisies

(We can change this to any question with 25+ votes: This one?) We only have one question available: What are the other IDEs for Arduino?
3.)

Ask about...

Specific issues with arduino
Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

Don't ask about...

Anything not directly related to arduino
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

There are a few other fields in different locations that I'll talk about later. However, I feel like we should personalize them, making us feel like "not the average beta." What should we change some of these fields to?
Submission Format:
## Update to #[1/2/3]:
> Put Updated Text Here

Please put different fields in different answers. We can then vote on an individual idea, not a combination of them.
Note: Markup is only available on #1.

I'd say #1 should be based off our elevator pitch, which we don't have yet.

Update to #3:

Ask about...

Specific issues with Arduino boards, clones, code, and the Arduino IDE
Real problems or questions that you’ve encountered

Don't ask about...

Anything not directly related to Arduino
Any question that doesn't require knowledge about the Arduino platform to answer (Try Stack Overflow for general coding questions or
  Electrical Engineering for general electronics questions)
Questions that are primarily opinion-based
Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer


text:
Should we not allow questions asking for tutorials?
I am starting to wonder if we should close questions that are asking for tutorials.
These questions often lead to either link only answers or an extremely long answer. Should we close these questions?
Example question: Using NodeJS, socket.io and Adafruit HUZZAH CC3000 breakout board to control Arduino wirelessly?

Just wondering, what is considered (extremely) long answer? 200 words long? 400?

@Avamander I don't think there's any formal size; more than a page or two on the screen would probably be pushing it (excluding images/one word lists that have low screen space to information density). If you need more than two pages or so to completely answer question, that's too long. Now, if it's a page or two elaborating on stuff, that's an entirely different matter.

I've noticed quite a few questions of that style, where people are basically asking for links/resources. I think that kind of thing is outside the scope of the site, so it should be closed as Too Broad or Off Topic (whichever is most appropriate in the context).
(As a side note, perhaps we need an additional Off Topic reason to cope with such circumstances. Currently, the only Off Topic reason is "not about Arduino".)
The aim of pretty much any SE site is to become a resource in itself rather than a collection of links to other resources. Links may be included for background information or further reading, but they shouldn't form the primary content of any answer. We also shouldn't be posting long-form tutorials, as that doesn't fit the Q&A format well.

I'm going to start closing some of these questions tonight in batches of 1-2 questions per night. If an edit is possible, I will edit them to make them on topic, although some of these questions might be way too broad. I'm not touching the ones asking for a library (since I think we've pretty much decided that they are OK). If anyone wants to help, these questions are the ones that aren't closed (and include the word "tutorial").


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.


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:
Should "Arduino Mega 2560" be considered a revision of the Mega board?
We have the tag mega. I am almost positive that the OP for the only question so far is referring to the 2560 version of the board. Should we rename it as arduino-mega-2560, leave it because most people won't use the old revision, or add arduino-mega-original or arduino-mega-classic to refer to the original board?
It seems like the original version would still be used some. That's why I like the "original" and "classic" suffixes to the tags so a beginner Arduinoist (is that a word?) who wouldn't know the difference would just use the standard mega tag. However, someone referring to the vintage Arduino board would still be able to ask.

How should board revisions be handled? is not a duplicate because the Meta isn't simply a revision, it is just a "makeover" of a fairly popular board to keep the branding.

Mm... honestly I think it depends on one thing: would the question be completely changed if it was referring to the old Mega vs. the new Mega? If yes, probably we need a tag for the old one vs. the new one. If not... leave it.

I propose the old revision be called [tag:arduino-mega-1280], because that's what he rest of the community calls it

@TheDoctor Good idea.