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

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

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

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
2019 Community Moderator Election
The 2019 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

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

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


text:
2021 Community Moderator Election
The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:

Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase

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

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


text:
Which tags need to be cleaned up?
The initial days of beta can be a little awkward for tags. This post is meant to be a community-wiki style list of tags that need to be cleaned up for cases where users (like me) don't have sufficient reputation to make the changes.
Please feel free to edit my answer and add any changes you see need to be made (or remove any changes that have been completed)

I went through a lot of these and cherry picked the obvious ones. We don't really create tags and synonyms until an actual use case or problem is demonstrated. For the rest, how to retag individual questions would need a bit more experience from an actual Arduino user, so I'll leave those until pro tem moderators are appointed.

Irrelevant Tags
These tags are mostly accidentally created and should be removed.

c++ Discussion Here

Vague Tags
These should be removed (maybe even blocked if there is an option in the SE engine) because they are too vague.

input Too vague. The question that uses it uses it fine, but it really doesn't help someone find that question, and interrupts should be sufficient.
ide should be split into arduino-ide and individual tags such as eclipse

Spelling
These tags are mostly ones that need to be separated with a "-".
[None]

Synonyms
Synonyms require significant reputation or moderator abilities to create. The "master tag" (or whatever the proper term is) will replace the synonym when typed.

atmega328 I don't know what to do about this one really but often people tag this along with uno/arduino-uno
build → compile Some beginners may tag it as build but for the physical construction of a project. Mods have decided to leave it and watch it.

Tags to watch in the future...
Tags for topics that may be deemed off-topic soon.

enclosure Will we allow shopping questions here?

Sorry, Severino is one particular type of Arduino board. Is that tag you are referring to as improperly puncutated?

Sorry, there is no questions under it yet. So I figured it had to do with this https://github.com/tarekziade/arduino/blob/master/mamacar/server.ino

No problem. In any case, I would be suspicious about any tags that end with the suffix .ino as would probably refer to a sketch somewhere, which may not be worth a tag for it.

I agree, Thanks for the feedback.

I disagree with this. Over half of the first 20 questions on http://arduino.stackexchange.com/ bear almost no relation to electronics. (Yes, I counted)

I agree with removing [tag:electronics], as it's a very "non-descriptive" tag.  Other tags (e.g. [tag:LED] or [tag:pins]) would make it obvious if a question is about electronics or not.  It's almost (but not quite) a "meta-tag."

Um... [tag:programming] is nowhere close to [tag:uploading]...

@hichris123 Your right... a new user still could confuse them though. I'll try to see what I can do and put a not in the wiki now.

PLEASE NOTE: If you do create a edit to this post to edit tags, please comment them out with <!--TAG CONTENT HERE--> to preserve it in case we ever need it again. Also, make sure your edit has been approved before commenting out any tags. Thanks!

Spelling errors

webserver should be web-server
r should be r-environment One letter tags tend to be confusing Language tags should always be the language name, till the point a conflict arises.

Merges

uno and arduino-uno should be the same (pending discussion)
due with arduino-due
The upload tag should be merged into the more established uploading tag.

Language tags should be simply language names. A person who would use the [tag:R] tag, would know what it is.

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


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

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

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

:-) Great Job, guys!

About time! Thanks to all who made possible!!

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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When should an Arduino programming question be moved to Stack Overflow?
Programming is obviously a major part of using an Arduino, and a considerable amount of it is very domain specific (e.g. using particular libraries, or working with particular hardware).
However, I suspect we're likely to see general programming questions coming up as well here (especially from inexperienced hobbyists). For example, we may see questions about general C/C++ syntax, scope, data types, etc..
I think there should be some flexibility to avoid alienating site users. However, we'll presumably need to establish a guideline which indicates what kind of programming questions should be considered off-topic, and potentially better suited to Stack Overflow.
What should that guideline be?

A real key to this one will have to be where the relevant expertise is most likely to be found.  Forced migration from SO to here just because a tricky general programming or embedded question mentions arduino will be an issue to watch out for.

What I like most about our new Arduino SE network is that we are now free to ask whatever questions about Arduino we want.
I often felt very restrained about asking an Arduino question in EE.SE, fearing that it would be downvoted and closed. I don't feel like that anymore.
So, while I agree with Robert that programming questions may be posted on SO, we should avoid consider Arduino programming questions off-topic here. The OP should be free to choose where to post an Arduino programming question.
Given its high traffic and size, SO may now be the place to post a pure Arduino programming question, if you want an answer quickly. But, in time, I hope we can build enough momentum so that our site is the preferred one for all Arduino questions.
On the other hand, if the question has nothing to do with Arduino (ie. for loops, syntax), then I agree with the OP that we should move it to SO.
Update: After some thought, and a question that's been asked today, I changed my mind and wanted you all to think about it for a bit. Although there is a healthy tendency to avoid overlap between stacks, this is one that our communit would benefit of. It's similar to the overlap between Ar.SE and EE.SE in which an Arduino question with some electronics design can be asked in either stac. For more details, please see my new answer down below.

I disagree with "never," but I agree with the sentiment.  For example: A question saying "I know how to declare an integer with the Arduino, but how do I work with decimal numbers?" or "What's a while loop?" etc. should be off topic here.  However, a question about the Serial library for the Arduino should be on topic, IMO.

@anorton Agreed. It was indeed too strong. I've replaced "never" by "avoid".

I agree with you, @Ricardo but I think that question that regards aruino specific programming. Such as arduino pre-assembler, library coding principles and such is in the domain of Arduino SE (even when the question is in part about syntax)

Simple — A "generic programming problem" that does not need an understanding of Arduino hardware or its programming  interface to solve belongs on Stack Overflow.
For example, trying to figure out why a programming loop is not terminating would be an issue for Stack Overflow. It doesn't matter if the program just happens to be for an Arduino application; trying to resolve generic issues ("how to program") are outside the scope of this community.

I would add to your post that if it's specific about the Arduino libraries (standard or imported) that it should probably be here. You don't need to know much about the Arduino hardware to answer, but it probably would get much better answers than the four views on SO that it would get with that many questions.

After some thought, I respectfuly disagree. Although there is a healthy tendency to avoid overlap between stacks, this is one that our communit would benefit of. It's similar to the overlap between Ar.SE and EE.SE in which an Arduino question with some electronics design can be asked in either stack. For more details, please see my new answer down below: http://meta.arduino.stackexchange.com/a/161/46

Hi, I don't think such a rule is viable, because people will not know whether their problem is Arduino-related or not. What we realistically can outlaw is questions about code which doesn't run on an Arduino.

I know we all agreed that pure programming questions belong in StackOverflow. But I was a little sad today that we had to put on-hold this question, Check to see if all the values in an array are larger than x and set them to zero. Here's what the OP claimed to argue against closing/migrating his question:

well , Im using it for and lcd connected to an arduino, but its ok u can deleate it I figured it out –

That made me rethink the issue. So I'm posting this new answer so you can also think about it.
In that particular case, the OP had a very simple programming question, that most of us here in Arduino.SE could have answered in less than 5 minutes. Granted, it was a pure programming question that, under current guidelines, should have been put on-hold and prepared for migration to SO. And one of the mods diligently have done so. As expected.
But my thinking is that everybody lost a little with this behaviour:

The OP didn't get his question answered. Instead, he was told his question doesn't belong here because of a guideline he doesn't even know about. For new users, it's common to interpret that as "you don't belong here", because he doesn't know all the context we are in.
The OP has an Arduino board and will have plenty more questions. But now he's confused as to whether his questions are welcome here. So, we probably lost an active user because of a rule that we forced ourselves to follow.
At least in this beta phase, we need the questions. It was an Arduino question, but we gave that up.

Rethinking the matter, to me the issue whether pure programming questions are on topic here is the same as an Arduino question that involves some electronics design posted on EE.SE. In that case, the question is on-topic on both sites, and it's up to the user to decide where to post it.
In summary, the new interpretation I'm proposing is that pure programming questions are on-topic here as long as they come from an Arduino context. These should not be migrated to SO. That's because everybody wins if it was posted here and we keep it here. We have the expertise to answer it, for sure, because they are likely to be about C++, the libs we are so familiar with, and other Arduino details that we are specialized at.
By keeping the questions here, we save the OP the trouble and ansiety of having his or her questions migrated. And one day, as our site grows, we will be able to answer those questions better than SO.
What do you think?

Mind you that I'm still against boat questions (e.g. "What is the best movie for Arduino users?")

Despite being the one who closed the question, I'm inclined to agree. In fact, I probably would have left the question open if it had actually mentioned that it was for an Arduino project. What we want to avoid is giving people free-reign to use this site as a beginner's version of SO. As a side note, it's worth mentioning that the OP had already posted the question on SO, and someone had incorrectly advised him to ask here instead. It seems silly to keep the question in both places.

See response here. cc @PeterR.Bloomfield

+1 for "everybody lost a little with this behaviour:"

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having some questions be on topic for more than one site.  We can't assume people who program Arduinos have the programming experience necessary to determine beforehand if their bug that they are confused enough to ask about online is directly related to the Arduino architecture or not.  Some people asking may never have done any programming that wasn't on an Arduino.  I don't think we should set any criteria where only the experts can tell what site a question should go to.  If there's an Arduino involved, it should be allowed.

I'm inclined to agree to a certain extent. Newcomers in particular should be given some leeway.

+1 Sorry, I had not read your answer before, but it is basically the same I said in my new answer today, so we agree. Good! In my answer, however, I had the chance of discussing an specific case that came out today. Take a look if you have the chance as it illustrates your point as well.

We should leave them alone until we get about half way through beta. Due to the site being in Private Beta, I don't think that we should move them yet, because it would make those questions un-accessible until the site goes into Beta (which at the minimum will be 1 week). Once we get going good, I think that we should determine what should be carried over to Arduino SE, and what would be considered duplicate based on what has already been asked on SO SE.
I do agree that we will need to do this, but now is not the time.

I think you might have misunderstood my question. I'm not suggesting we move anything from SO to Arduino SE. I was asking about the scope of Arduino SE, and how we determine what kind of programming questions are suitable to be asked here (as opposed to what would be more suitable on SO).

Ahh, gotcha thx for the clarification

Just adding to Robert's answer, one simple check would be to read a question excluding any mentions of Arduino and then seeing if it makes sense. If the question does make sense without any mentions of the Arduino platform, then it is a generic programming question. Otherwise, if the Arduino mention is critical to answering the question, then it is on-topic here.
Ex. Why is this loop not terminating on the Uno? would be off-topic as it is unlikely that Arduino's architecture would be causing an infinite loop.

I posted an alternative answer to this question and I wanted you to take a look and comment. Basically I'm saying, why take the trouble of removing Arduino mentions to see if the question still makes sense? Why reflect so much to check if a Arduino programmming question is pure programming or not? Why not just answer it? We are certainly very capable of answering any Arduino questions, aren't we? Well, it's just food for thought.

@Ricardo We are capable of answering a wide variety of questions ranging from software design, algorithms, data structures, electrical concepts, electronics designs and usage, etc.. Just the fact that we can answer them and that they happen to be in the neighbourhood of our actual purpose, doesnt mean we should. The wider scope we have, the more diluted the focus of the site becomes. How? A person who may come here specifically interested in Arduino, will not feel as comfortable on seeing questions on transistors and MOSFETs ...

... being interfaced to control an external device or somebody interested in a lighting a few LEDs will be lost on seeing a question on software engineering models being discussed. Why is this bad? The limited resources that we as a community have to solve such issues gets spread thin over multiple divergent fields of study, some of which may be so far off what we actually started with, that the site becomes a confused mix of multiple things.

@Ricardo Think of this as it scales up, rather than at the present size and activity levels. While I realize my tone may be ominous, the fact is there are sites at present dealing with exactly this issue and I have been involved in the clean-up going on. Its a pain to sort out such messes later on (100-200+ off-topic posts), plus the gains that there may appear to be at present do not last beyond a certain point.

Point taken. We can certainly keep the existing guidelines for pure programming questions. I just wanted to express my opinion after seeing that specific question closed.

I am in agreance with @Ricardo's most recent answer. I think there is a lot of overflow between stack sites and what is most appropriate for one user is not necessarily most appropriate for another. Given this site is in beta, unless the question has nothing to do with an Arduino, it could remain here to benefit all users.
Even a generic question about data types or timers mean different things to dedicated AVR hobbyists, and Arduino aficionados ;^)
As someone who is relatively new to SO, I have posted questions on various sites, but my main three are the main site, Ask Different (Apple stuff) and here. I have asked an Arduino question (which was more based around analog electronics) so I asked in EE. Funnily enough, I went with a programming solution, so it could probably have been asked here.
Leave it up to the OP and unless they get it drastically wrong, move/close/hold it in that case. After all, there probably is a reason they chose to come here instead of somewhere else.
Coming back to "appropriateness" I mention above, and by way of example: where would a question about mechanical "bounce" be better placed?

Generically covering all bases, micro, electronics, programming, for my Arduino project (Ar.SE)
Programatically on main site
Electronically on (EE.SE)
one of the other programming SE sites

I would argue that here is just as appropriate as either of the others, mainly because on EE you would probably get steered for an analog solution. Any programming response is purely going to be about that, programming. Whereas here, at Arduino, you're going to get (hopefully) tried and tested solutions from other Arduino users which could include one or the other method, allowing a broader range of answers. Essentially, debouncing is either a programming or an electrical issue, but it still has a place here (IMHO).

I disagree with these two answers suggesting that "generic programming questions" should be off-topic. The thing is, it's very hard to define what's a "generic programming question" unless you already know the answer.
In Robert's example, "why a programming loop is not terminating" the reason could be that the termination condition is while(counter = 1), which would make it a generic C++ question. Or the reason could be that the user called a delay() function in a loop running in the interrupt context, which is unanswerable by a C++ programmer who doesn't know the implementation details specific to Arduino. And the asker doesn't know which one it is, else they wouldn't be asking.
You can't just decide that "generic programming questions are off-topic" and expect people to follow that rule, unless you explain them how they can tell it's a generic programming question. For example, you could say: "compile it on Windows, and if your code runs fine then it's an Arduino problem, otherwise it's generic programming error". Unfortunately, that won't work as Arduino code cannot run on Windows.
One group of questions we can reasonably define and forbid is the "my code does not compile" kind. avr-gcc is a well-known compiler supporting rather standard C++, so such questions would be 100% on-topic on SO. But I don't see much benefit for us in doing so.

I don't think you should send people coming here to Stack Overflow.  Users that would be attracted to this site are going to be new to the hobby, probably new to programming, and probably don't know up from down.  Stack Overflow makes a point to be unfriendly to new users, low level questions, "things that everyone [should] knows", and presumes that you're pulling aside a senior coworker to waste his time, so you'd better make it quick.
If I wanted to encourage people into my hobby, niche, or product, I would not send them to such a place.
To quote Ricardo:

But my thinking is that everybody lost a little with this behaviour:
The OP didn't get his question answered. Instead, he was told his question doesn't belong here because of a guideline he doesn't even
  know about. For new users, it's common to interpret that as "you don't
  belong here", because he doesn't know all the context we are in.
The OP has an Arduino board and will have plenty more questions. But now he's confused as to whether his questions are welcome here.
  So, we probably lost an active user because of a rule that we forced
  ourselves to follow.
At least in this beta phase, we need the questions. It was an Arduino question, but we gave that up.

Regardless if you agree with my statement about Stack Overflow, this is a new user's takeaway when you say Nah bruh, go ask that somewhere else.


text:
Stepping down as provisional moderator

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

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

Thanks Peter for all you have done.

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

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

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

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


text:
Are clone-specific questions on topic for this site?
There are a lot of different Arduino clones of varying quality on the market. Obviously they are mostly equivalent to the standard ones, so hopefully the majority of questions should be widely applicable.
However, there may be cases where a clone's features, layout, and/or spec deviate from the norm, whether by mistake or by design.
Should this site include questions which relate to specific clones, or would that be off-topic?

I think they should be on-topic here... there isn't really a better site for them on the SE network.

What happens if they don't use the Arduino IDE / Wiring language -- think ElectricImp?

I didn't think Electric Imp is an "arduino clone"

@sachleen No, indeed, it's not. I am curious about how these not-Arduino, but similar area boards will be handled. Like, Pinoccio is shipping an arduino library, but also a whole web based software stack.

I think they should be fine. Most clones are just the same thing with extra, or removed, features.
I've also noticed, especially on /r/arduino that a lot of people get an Arduino without knowing its a clone. There's nothing wrong with that, and denying them the ability to ask questions would be no good for this site. Especially since we need people to ask questions to keep this site alive.
One thing we can do is require people to mention what board they are using. This can be in the question and/or tag. That way there is no confusion.

[Terminology note: in this answer I'm using the word "clone" as the original poster used it; most of the devices he and I are discussing would be called "derivatives" in the Arduino taxonomy.]
Yes, clones are absolutely on topic. "Arduino" most often refers not to specific hardware devices but the ecosystem that allows people easily to play with a lot of different hardware and software, usually (but not always) using the Arduino IDE. Much as "PCs" quickly evolved to a general set of platforms with a lot of characteristics in common rather than a specific set of machines built by IBM, Arduino from the beginning, with opening of the specifications and designs, been aimed at this; the official introduction states:

All Arduino boards are completely open-source, empowering users to build them independently and eventually adapt them to their particular needs.

The commitment of both Arduino (the company) and the semi-official (SparkFun, AdaFruit) and unofficial community to this is demonstrated by:

Instructions for building a clone* on the official Arduino site itself.
Different form factors both official and unofficial.
Microcontrollers ranging from slightly (ATmegta2560) to moderately (ATtiny) to rather (ESP32) to greatly (ARM Cortex) different.
Libraries offering similar functionality amongst official releases, unoffical libraries that become official, and other unofficial libraries that are suggested in official library documentation as alternatives.

I personally think one of the most beautiful projects I've even seen in the the Ardunio SE is Nick Gammon's torch locator, which involves nothing at all found on arduino.cc except the IDE, yet shows so much of the spirit of what Arduino is: useful real-world interaction, a good smidgen of hobbyist-level EE knowledge (the analysis of the expected lifetime), and "we don't need no ARM CPU running Linux to do this." (The original question also hits many of these points, too, particularly with the novel application.)
Arduino has always been about experimentation and playing with not just the official things supplied by Arduino itself but with almost anything anybody can make that can be fit into the ecosystem. "Clones," made for many different reasons, and ranging from almost exact copies to very different things, are clearly a part of that.

I think you meant ATtiny rather than "ATmini". Good answer +1!

Yes! Thanks for catching that. I've edited the post but, for things like this, you should feel free to edit other people's posts, too.

I normally would do an edit but, unlike the regular Arduino Stack Exchange,  that feature is disabled for me on meta.

Oh, so it is for answers not your own! Thanks for pointing that out.

@CurtJ.Sampson - don't re-edit your past misrepresentation of the Arduino website into this.  What you link is not instructions for creating a "clone" - but rather a functional alternative on a breadboard.  The actual Arduino policy on "clones" is here: https://blog.arduino.cc/2013/07/10/send-in-the-clones/

I am using "clone" in the sense the original poster used it, not in the particular and strict definition used on the page you referenced ("there may be cases where a clone's features, layout, and/or spec deviate from the norm"). As I said, if you have an issue with this, make your own answer to claim that what the original poster and I are talking about are not "clones."

@ChrisStratton: I've removed (again) the change you made to my answer and added a note explaining that the original poster and I are using a fairly loose definition of "clone." (We have good reasons for doing this.) Please don't re-start your edit war.

Hmmm, might sound petty, but I think I would have to agree with @ChrisStratton. The link is not how to make a clone (as in a Chinese clone, for example) but how to build a Barebones Arduino on a breadboard. The term Clone is generally used for a commercial rip off, whereas the term Barebones is generally used for an ATmega328 on a homemade PCB, stripboard/vero/ breadboard. I would assume that the former is the sense in which Peter (the OP) meant by clone, and certainly how I read the question - until I saw your answer, which IMHO uses the term "clone" rather misleadingly.

@Greenonline So what if I make a rip-off of the Arduino design, change it by building it on a breadboard per the article on the Arduino website, and sell that commercially? Is that a "clone" now? If "clone" dicussions were disallowed, would it be ok for me to discuss that breadboard here because I built it myself, but not ok for someone else to discuss that exact same breadboard if I'd sold it to him?

You would be selling a barebones Arduino kit on a breadboard, not a clone. You have not cloned an Arduino board design, with the PCB that it entails, per se. There is a lot more additional circuitry on a Arduino board (be it Uno, Mega, Micro, Mini or what have you), than there is on the barebones/standalone breadboarded version that you link to. Besides, I never stated that we can't, or should not, discuss clones here. I own exclusively clones, never bought an original. The issue is that you call the standalone a clone, when it isn't. Nowhere on that page is the word "clone" even mentioned.

@Greenonline That it's on breadboard instead of a PCB, has different parts, whatever, all come under "there may be cases where a clone's features, layout, and/or spec deviate from the norm, whether by mistake or by design." If you have an issue with calling things like that "clones", you need to take it up with question poster, not me, since I am simply using the terminology he used in the question. If you interpret his terminology differently, you ought to post an answer of your own explaining things in that light.


text:
How to handle bad language?
I've noticed a couple of instances of minor profanity on the site, mainly in comments. It's not been directed at anyone, nor has it been particularly vulgar. However, it's definitely into territory which some people would consider somewhat offensive, or at least unprofessional.
How should we respond to instances like these?

http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/22600/16472

As is important in any such discussion, what did you see? It is near impossible to discuss such issues without looking at specific instances.
In any case, the normal policy applies. If directed at an individual or group, flag as offensive, be it a question, answer or a comment. You may edit it out if you so wish, but it is best to bring it to the attention of moderators, so such users may be explained how things work here, and if needed further action may be taken.
In cases of general use of inappropriate language, edit it out and/or flag for moderator attention.
Most of this is very clearly mentioned in the Help Center.

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/behavior
https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/flagging

I hadn't found the Behaviour article on the help centre, so thanks for pointing it out. The salient part is: "Please note that expletives are not allowed. If you use expletives on this site, you may be issued a warning or a suspension."

I think an important part of our goal is to be friendly and welcoming. As such, my inclination is to edit-out profanity where possible (in questions/answers), or flag it for removal otherwise (in comments).
I'm not suggesting that we enforce a puritanical attitude to language, or that we need to censor people or ideas. Rather, I think we should strive to be professional and mutually respectful, which sometimes requires a diplomatic choice of words.

The relevant documentation on this is confusing at best.
The behaviour page has the notice: Please note that expletives are not allowed. If you use expletives on this site, you  may be issued a warning or a suspension.
However, the may be issued a warning or a suspension. portion of the page is a direct link to a meta question about "profanity" on stack-exchange in general that directly disagrees with the linking text. In response to the question  Are expletives allowed on SE sites?, the highest-voted answer is Yes, but keep them to a minimum.
As far as I can tell, I would assume the behaviour page is out of date, since it seems the community consensus disagrees with it.

I've spoken to the other SE mods, and the Help Center article apparently takes priority. The expletives issue is basically a rule across all SE sites, rather than a community-driven decision.

@PeterR.Bloomfield - In that case, where is the threshold? Shit? S**t? &%$&?

Generally speaking, the rule seems to be no expletives at all, in any form. Personally, I'm not intending to chase after the milder stuff like "hell" or "crap" (unless it's getting flagged a lot by users, or it's used somewhere very visible like a question title). Anything stronger than that will have to be removed though.

@PeterR.Bloomfield - It seems to me like you're reading a lot into those rules. Again, Is S**t ok? #$%!?

Partially- or fully-censored expletives are still expletives, so please don't use them. They shouldn't be necessary for communicating anything constructive (and anything not constructive shouldn't be posted on the site).


text:
Support for UDOO & Integrated Arduino Boards
Should we support tags of specific boards like the UDOO & Raspberry Pi? While a Raspberry Pi is different from an Arduino, the UDOO essentially is an Arduino Due and LInux Quad-core computer integrated into one device with shared processor communication. With that being said currently the UDOO has some issues with their IDE that doesn't allow certain Arduino Due related things to work properly. One of the main issues currently is that floats compile, but don't work properly on the Due and just crash the board.

Are you saying I won't be able to run a UDOO program on Due or a Due program on UDOO?

Raspberry Pi is definitely not on topic... try http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/

These kind of questions can be asked now at: Embedded Systems which is currently in private beta.

@sachleen once the float problem is fixed there will be no difference. Until then due code uploaded to the UDOO through their internal ide might not work. But if uploaded like a normal due it'll work.

I think we could treat the UDOO as an "Arduino compatible" device, as per this question. That means questions about the Arduino side of it would be relevant. However, if somebody is asking a wholly non-Arduino question about it (e.g. about its integrated graphics) then it should probably be considered off-topic.
The Raspberry Pi would seem to be off-topic as a general rule, as it's not trying to be Arduino compatible at all. Admittedly, there will probably be exceptions, e.g. where somebody is trying to program an Arduino from a Raspberry Pi (maybe via Gertboard or something).

What about the specific IDE glitches abs other UDOO issues even attempting to program the Due connected to it.

If it's a problem with UDOO's own IDE, then I suspect it's probably off-topic here.

I don't think most UDOO questions are on topic here... Unless the question is related to only the Arduino part of the system. If you can replace UDOO with Arduino in the question and it still makes sense, then it'd be on topic.
Problems with the UDOO IDE are totally off topic. If we allow people to ask any UDOO related questions, we will surely see some of those, but we can mark them as off topic, no problem.


text:
How should board revisions be handled?
The boards undergo significant changes across revisions. Is there a need to create separate tags for the different revisions or should we just specify the revision in the question without having separate tags?
The Uno for example underwent multiple changes going from R2 to R3 such as a new microcontroller(Atmega 32 from 16) as well as switching of the FTDI board with a Atmega 16. So, it is possible that many questions relevant for R2 may be obsolete with regard to R3.

Given my understanding of the target audience here, revisions shouldn't be reflected in tags.
Only if the revision is germane to the answer/question should it be raised; No need to force people to try to understand what revision they have just to tag a question.


text:
Who are the notable bloggers in the Arduino community, and how can we get them involved?
We have established a repository having some excellent questions. Its now time to get the word out about Arduino. There are many people in the online world who manage very active and productive blogs. These individuals have a lot of referral power. They can help us reach new audiences and gain more members for our community.
If you're a blogger, or if you know a blogger, who may be interested in picking one of our most interesting questions, blogging about the topic, and then referring the readers to our site, please mention them below.
Also, share any ideas you may have about how to get them interested in the site (if they aren't already!)

Did anyone contact Massimo Banzi about promoting arduino.SE or even participating to it? There's no better referrene than he, I think.

@jfpoilpret Maybe, we should try to get the attention of the people running Arduino.cc and other related blogs before we go directly to the founding team. It makes sense to bring good content to the table when you bring it to the attention of the main Arduino team.

Here is one way:
Helping the Experts Get Answers

In A Recipe to Promote your Site, Robert provided a great set of guidelines for organically growing your Q&A community. Buried within was this observation:

Reach the right kind of publications and bloggers. Make sure that the key experts in every field know about the site; not just the “Martha Stewart” big names; we want to talk to the people who go to these conferences.

But how do you reach writers, bloggers, and other notable experts in the field?
Help them get answers to their questions, too!

When a blogger or other publisher/expert has a problem, say to yourself, "hey, there’s a site for that!" — then go ahead and ask the the question on their behalf… and send them what you find.
If you continue to provide excellent answer like you have been, you have a pretty good chance of adding a valuable member and evangelist to this community for a long time to come.

I wonder if anyone here follows Arduino on Twitter. This might be a good way to promote our site. Unfortunately, I don't have a Twitter account and haven't bothered creating one.

I use Twitter occasionally. I tweeted about this site just now, and tagged the official Arduino feed in it. Hopefully it'll get re-tweeted and word will spread. :)

There's Jeremy blum, JeremyBlum.com, I'm an arduino newbie, I searched on Youtube for tutorials, and his videos are HUGELY popular. This his channel
He seems to be a member on element14.com, there seems to be a good experienced arduino community there, I don't know for sure, I'm not a member there.
I don't know how to contact them, try using the contact form on Jeremy's site and introduce this site. I am not qualified to contact him on behalf of this site, I'm not a mod, I just signed, and I am a newbie when it comes to Arduino.
By the way, on arduino.cc forums, there are some very good people, if you can get them to visit this site.
I wish you guys the best of luck, I really was angry when the arduino site went down the first time. I really love arduino, I hope you guys can get the best of the best in the Arduino community. Best of luck!

I don' know if Nick Gammon is a "notable blogger", but I've just discovered his blog (actually it seems to be a forum but posts in it are more akin to blog posts) yesterday and found it full of interesting stuff about Arduino, in particular the interrupts post which is what brought me there, I found this post incredibly complete about all one would want to know about Arduino interrupts.
He also has a GitHub repository with a few interesting utilities for Arduino.

There doesn't seem to be a "respected" Arduino individual that I know of*
*There are a few blogs with a lot of respect but are managed by multiple people. If there was one, single respected person, he/she would probably be posted here already.

Hack a Day: They post about many fun and creative projects, from automatic flame throwing pumpkins, to DIY heat cameras. I don't know if this is the thing that they would blog about... it's more of a "hard core EE" site. Some beginners that know a lot in other areas but not in Arduino might come here if anything's posted. Also, we might be able to gain some more advanced users and/or questions. EDIT: We were mentioned on this blog!
MAKE: They post a lot of beginner oriented projects and tutorials. They also have a store and a magazine. Again, they wouldn't probably won't just put a link in.
Lifehacker: They post mainly tips for the geeky person. If you don't read it, I would recommend it. This one would be hardest to get a link only: but I have an idea to get it on one of this sites...

How do we get a link on a site that big?
We don't, really. We need to generate great content of how to do something, find a clever solution, and send it in to one of those. For Hack a Day, the toilet paper question might get mentioned if it generates a great answer. Make probably would need a good tutorial on how to do something that they could rewrite with pictures (and throw in a link). Lifehacker?: Anything that would make your life more productive and is fairly easy to DIY, even for a software kind-of-guy.

I doubt that we could get a mention on all of the sites above.
You wanted a list of "prominent" blogs in the community, I gave you what are read often. (Making it a wiki: edit this list if you want to.) But I think if we work hard, we can get something on a popular site.
But wait... there's more!
One thing often overlooked is Wikipedia. Seriously. Sometimes, Wikipedia comes before the actual site in Google. We currently aren't ranked on Google. If someone was Googling something along the lines of, *arduino forum site***, Wikipedia may come up on the first page due to its high SEO. I think we should try all of the above sites, but Wikipedia doesn't need any real approval to be posted about. It has great SEO, and we might even get up into Google sooner than without (with cross-linking sites). Note: I'm no expert at SEO, so correct me if I'm wrong anybody.
**Although I hate this, we should probably put some mention about being a forum in the Wikipedia article. It'll get better ranking in Google. We could probably even do:

Arduino Stack Exchange is similar to a forum, but it is categorized as a Question and answer site. Foo bar blah blah...

Are there any SE sites other than the trilogy([so], [su], [sf]) that have Wikipedia posts?

@AsheeR Yes, Ask Ubuntu. I'm surprised the pages aren't better maintained... or at least for all sites out of beta. Even the main Stack Exchange page is pretty dull.

@Annonomus Person: regarding "form" in "Arduino form site", "being a form in", and "similar to a form": Do you mean "forum"?

@PeterMortensen Yep.

For what its worth, I added a link on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino a few day ago and its still standing. (It took me a few days to build up enough points to comment here)


text:
Are questions about serial communication using third party software on-topic?
The serial interface provided by Arduino can be utilized by many software packages that feature serial communication libraries. Are questions on setting up the serial connection, from such software with the Arduino, on-topic?

I would say no. Arduino really has nothing to do with it. It's all configuration in the 3rd party software to match the Arduino's configuration.
This may be on topic:

How do I configure my Arduino's serial port with the following
  settings?

This is not:

How do I configure this software to communicate with a device which
  uses the following serial configuration?

See how I said "device" instead of "Arduino"? Changing Arduino there doesn't change the question in any way.

I realized you may be referring to questions like How can I communicate Arduino to Matlab. Still, the underlying question is how to interface a serial device with MatLab, which really has nothing to do with Arduino specifically.
Even in that question, the first comment is

Do you need help writing the code for the Arduino, or help writing
  MATLAB code to read data input from the serial stream?

In general, I'd agree. If it's clear that the question is nothing to do with Arduino then it's off-topic. Judging by Arduino questions on SO though, the distinction may not always be clear. E.g. a lot of hobbyists seem to like connecting Android or Processing to Arduino via serial, and when they have a problem it may not be obvious (at least to them) where that problem actually lies.

I was referring to this as well..

@sachleen - here's one force-migrated here from SO that is ultimately another example of "how do I write a program on my desktop to talk to my arduino" that thus probably belongs there rather than here. http://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/1358/arduino-serial-communication


text:
Do we want a blog?
Many Stack Exchange communities maintain site-specific blogs like

Sci-Fi
Information Security
DIY

These are intended for topics that are part of the domain but don't fit well in a Q&A format. I think there are many interesting topics we could cover in a blog if we have enough members interested in contributing posts.
This provides some guidelines regarding community blogs. So, would you like to see an Arduino.SE blog?
Would you be interested in contributing to the blog? (if yes, comment on this post)

No. Definitely later, but it's too early.

We will need at least 4-5 regular writers (who can function as reviewers), and keep the blog going at minimum 1 post/2 weeks. Plus, of course, anyone would be welcome to join in to submit ideas, posts, tools, projects, etc, that we may cover, or even submit full fledged articles that could be published as-is. All of this depends on whether there are enough users interested in contributing, in the first place :) –  AsheeshR 9 hours ago

One post every 8/10 weeks if we have 4/5 people isn't so bad. With us three moderators, and maybe another user it's doable. I'd even be open to organizing and proofreading all of the content and uploading it as long as I have the content two days in advance. However, will people really read it? The Facebook page has only 7 likes. I know not everybody likes liking everything they see, however, it does seem like we won't get many readers per post.
I'd estimate we might get 50 a month if we're lucky at this stage. I'd say that that seems too low. The point of the blog is to expand the community's scope beyond the actual site and generate regulars, but we still need to get a little more users to make something like this worthwhile. In the meantime, share links to our site, friends us on Facebook, or even tweet one of our questions. Try the approach that if someone asks an Arduino question online to ask it here and give them a link when it gets lots of high quality answers. They might join us and then promote us.
I may be total wrong, but not many of the smaller betas have blogs. We're the third smallest community on the site, and I think we need to grow a little more to add something like this to make this effort successful.

I get 100-200 pageviews per month on my blog and I post less than once a month plus I dont publicise it; so your 50 views estimate seems rather pessimistic. Plus, a fair part of what we are doing is an investment a few months down the line rather than for now. Any useful content out there, irrespective of numbers, is good for us and the community. While I agree views are important, that should not be the sole driving factor here. The sharing aspect that you point out, goes without saying.

We should be sharing irrespective of the blog or other initiatives. Also, [islam.se] got its blog roughly 6-7 months after launch. I agree that this is fairly early, and I had voiced the same opinion earlier. However, we are a rather active and enthusiastic community and I think that a blog may just work out.

@Asheesh True, it might work out with us being active. For the Islam thing, we're a month and a half not 6 months. I say wait a few weeks before starting something and try to get a little more users.* For views... I guess we should keep the focus more on Arduino than on the site to gain viewers. | *It seems like we shouldn't start out with a post tomorrow, but we can start now and figure out a system.

I think it's a good idea. But how will it work? (Specially in terms of when this community grows) Maybe a system of posts proposals and a group of reviewers or something like that? Or are you thinking more about having a reduced set of commiteds writers?

We will need at least 4-5 regular writers (who can function as reviewers), and keep the blog going at minimum 1 post/2 weeks. Plus, of course, anyone would be welcome to join in to submit ideas, posts, tools, projects, etc, that we may cover, or even submit full fledged articles that could be published as-is. All of this depends on whether there are enough users interested in contributing, in the first place :)

I think a blog could add some value to the site.
One thing off the top of my head is a question like this: 'Basic electronics' resources [on hold] as a blog post than Q&A.

Could also be a place to present projects/libraries (something like the contest showcase but maybe more detailed)?


text:
What is the status of Arduino.SE Public Beta
Now we've been in Beta for 90 days.
If we take a look at the latest metrics, we are still far from SE expectations on almost all aspects.

So what's next?
Is the Beta going to be extended (how is that decided and by whom?)
What will happen if the Beta is not extended?
If the Beta is extended, how can we improve Arduino.SE achievements to meet SE expectations?
I know these are several questions in one, but I guess the time has come to take stock of our situation as I believe several people here are wondering the same.

TL;DR everything is going to continue as normal.

So what's next?

Nothing special.

Is the Beta going to be extended (how is that decided and by whom?)

Yes. Sites may stay in beta for 2-3 years before any decisions may be taken. The Community Team reviews every beta site every 2-3 months, and looks for any problems or issues. If there aren't any ominous posts from the CM team, that usually means the site is doing fine, and is progressing towards a graduation.

What will happen if the Beta is not extended?

This will be a long time away, if at all it gets to that.

If the Beta is extended, how can we improve Arduino.SE achievements to meet SE expectations?

The statistics are not absolute criteria. A site may be kept in beta, even if it meets all the criteria; a site may be launched even if it meets 3/5 of the criteria. The numbers are there just to guide the community on some generic goals. The CM team knows and understands that each site is different, and they look for continuous stable growth, rather a set 3-4 parameters. The graduation process is very fuzzy.
However, sites should try to stay in the green on atleast 3 to 4 of the 5 parameters shown on A51.

Thanks, this looks to be good news! Is there some location on A51 (or elsewhere) where I could find out more about this?

@jfpoilpret There are a few posts by Robert around many other metas. You will have to search around to find more. I will link back if I come across anything recent.

@jfpoilpret I've been watching these parameters for a while now and it looks like things are picking up now. Visits a day is steadily growing - it just went over 500 from Needs Work to Okay. Great new! Right on!!


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

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

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

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

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

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

Image requirements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
Can we nukify the "programming"/"sketch" tag(s)?
Okay, here's the problem: programming is really vague. I'd think it would be much more beneficial to use either c++/c/etc. Additionally, do you think we should keep the sketch tag, as it seems to be very similar to programming (with an exception of sketch size, which is its own tag)? However, there still might be some applications that would be appropriate to use sketch...
Take a look at some of the tagging I've seen that use programming:

programming, c++, (other tags)
programming, java, (other tags)
programming, (other tags)

The programming tag seems very ambiguous. In some cases, you have to assume which language they're using.
So the solution that I feel appropriate:

Edit the sketch wiki to say something like this:

For questions about coding your Arduino, please use the language tag (c++ is the official language for Arduino). Use this tag when talking about the concept of a sketch, such as the actual file, not the code.

programming: retag all non-c++ questions, perform a merge (i.e. automatic mass retagging), and edit the wiki like this:

For questions about coding your Arduino, please use the language tag (c++ is the official language for Arduino). Use this tag when talking about Arduino coding in general.

With the merge, we might have to move a question or two back to programming, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

So what is your input on this? Any suggestions? Is it fine as is?

Closely related question: http://meta.arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/111/when-should-we-use-the-c-tag

@Peter Yes, I did look at that one before I posted this one. The tag seemed fine then, but it seems like now that it's used pretty much whenever it's not electronics. IMHO tags are designed to be specific enough that someone can subscribe to a tag and get a small range of questions that they're interested in, but not too specific that they have to subscribe to twelve different RSS feeds for hardware interrupts. I think that separating topics like C++ and [insert another language] make the feeds more useful, especially since I'm not that interested in coding with Java.

One problem I see is some people may program with Arduino IDE without even knowing they use C or C++. Also, for beginners, the difference between C and C++ is not always obvious.

@jfpoilpret Yes, that is a good point. I kinda feel like we should rename the "programming" tag and use that for standard IDE code (i.e. setup()/loop()).

Here is the way it makes the most sense for me:
programming should be for questions that require a knowledge of Arduino-specific methods and other code, like delay(19), TCNT2, and void setup(){}. It might need to be renamed to arduino-code or something similar.
c++ should be for questions that

involve pure C++ code, e.g.
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    std::cout << "Hello World!";
}

involve advanced C++ coding techniques that a mediocre Arduino programmer is not expected to know, (e.g. pointers), or
can be answered by someone who knows C++, but has absolutely no experience with Arduino code, e.g.

Whai dosnt dis codez werk?
void setup() {
    digitalWrite(2, HIGH)
}

Other language tags, like matlab and r, should be used in any question that is related to those languages.

But then people still will be tagging a matlab question with "matlab" and "programming." I kinda think we should rename programming to make it clear it's for standard IDE code... ideas?

@AnnonomusPenguin Is that necessarily bad? If I want to see all coding-related questions, I don't want to favorite [programming], [matlab], [r], [c], [c++], etc.

True, but I think we should add another just tag for the code with the standard Arduino bootloader and libraries. That way someone who wants only standard Arduino code questions can favorite that tag and someone who wants all code can favorite just one tag.


text:
Should we have events in Pin 13?
Hi everybody! I'm the owner of the chatroom Pin 13 (formerly Arduino). It was automatically assigned to me after my record of high activity on the chat room. Anyway, there is a option to add new events that show up.

I don't have to schedule a event, but this is our main chat room and I think it would be cool to do something. Additionally, the chat wouldn't be any different except a few notices to remind people about the event. Everyone can chat about normal topics, if they choose. It should last at least 24 hours for different timezones.
Should we have anything on our chat room? If so, what should we do? Please include a title for it and if it should be a regular occurrence.

Pin 13 doesn't support external interrupt events.

We should call our events vectors, after the interrupt vectors on the AVR CPU

During the last iteration, we had a weekly meetup lasting half an hour every week for about 2 to 3 weeks in which there were 5-10 people participating. It usually went on for almost an hour however. That was, in my opinion quite successful, and I think we could try something similar.

Weekly Meetup

The discussion can be kept open and spanning a range of topics. It does help if a single person takes the lead, and develops at least some sort of list of topics to discuss, and prevents the discussion from getting fixated on a single issue. It is likely that if we end up discussing a single specific issue for 30 minutes then, it would be better suited to a meta post than a chat discussion.
The event could be called Setup() && Chat()

Could you recommend a name and a when to do it (Sunday, etc.) please?

@Annonomous The time needs to be discussed and decided collectively by the people interested in participating. My suggestion won't help if no one is available at that time.

Or void setup() { chat(); }

Something that I thought of:

Site Improvement Day

Anyone anytime can improve the site, but we should focus that day on how we can make it better. Be it retagging, cleaning up comments, or even just asking some new questions if the site suffers inactivity, let's get working!
This could be a bi-weekly or monthly event. People can always do things like above, but we can use the room to chart our progress and maintain our site, as well as review the healthiness of the site.

Just to clarify, by "bi-weekly" you mean every 2 weeks, right? In some places, it can mean twice a week.

@Peter Yes, two weeks (~2 per month) not every 3.5 days...


text:
What should the design of our site be?
Part of the [7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta(http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/the-7-essential-meta-questions-of-every-beta/)]
We have our site here, and we should start thinking about the theme. We don't have to create a full theme, but if we can get some outstanding ideas, it will only make our site better. What are some ideas that you can think of? We should try to get some ideas.

This is a great question... however, sites don't get their design until they get out of beta (i.e. they are a graduated site). So don't delete the question, but keep in mind it may keep years for this design to happen.

@hichris123 I know it takes a while for the design, but it was in the 7 essential questions of every beta. If they put it in there, it must be somewhat important.

The 7 essential questions are kinda out of date... if you're bored there's some mSO questions on this.

@hichris123 Ouch... 4 years old, not updated, nor taken down? Whoops! Oh well it can spark some activity because lately the site has been slowing down...

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about an event years into the future. Also, as the 7 essential questions are no longer relevant at such an early stage.

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

Just a few ideas I had:

Arduino color (HEX: 00979c, accent color: e34c00) We may have to get it cleared by Arduino itself, but SE is pretty well respected so I don't think that it will be that hard as long as we try to add a few key differences. The colors, however, are comforting for a user to see.
An Uno with a LED (blinking, maybe?). This is a symbolic "start" of Arduino knowledge, and might be a good symbol too new users. Animations might be annoying, maybe just two quick flashes at a page load? It might still be distracting but at least have the LED drawn on.

We should also think of names for the site... oh well, tomorrow!
I make a small little image here in GIMP:

Take a look at [gaming.se] site theme. Its got some elements of what you suggest.

If we were to have an LED blink on page load, it most definitely should be the on-board pin 13 LED.

@Guy Good point. However, I'm not going to mess with the design: it is still a bit off. We only got into public today.


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Can we get a way to accent Yún?
The Arduino Yún board, has an accent in it's name.
Unless you're using a modified/Spanish/Italian keyboard, it's hard to add the accent. It obviously isn't a huge deal, but I thought it might be something to think about. Could we:

Just ignore it? (Note: I didn't tag it feature-request if we wanted to ignore it)
Add an accent symbol on the toolbar?
Have some sort of script that automatically renames the instances of "Yun"

Technically, we're misspelling a board's name on purpose. Is this even a big deal?

I don't think it's a huge deal. I don't know how hard it is to add a toolbar button but I still don't think it adds too much/any value.

This is probably not worth the effort. It is unlikely there will be any confusion without the accent on Yun.

I don't think it is a big deal, but it is nice to get things looking right... regardless, we have three excellent examples, in the answers below, as to how to obtain a "ú".... :-)

If you're working on Windows, try holding the left Alt key and type 163 on the numpad (the cluster of number keys at the right-hand side of many conventional keyboards). That should give you the accented ú character.
It may only work on American/British English systems.
For laptops/notebooks, you may have to enable num lock or similar to use part of the main keyboard as a numpad.

+1; works for me.

If you are using Mac OS. You can get the accent by pressing

alt+e followed by u.

I don't see a special need for an extra icon in the toolbar.

on OSX Lion+ (i think), hold u and then press 4 when a menu comes up

I wonder if HTML entities like ú pruduce Yún in stackexchange markdown? ... it seems they do.
This is handy if you have a tenkeyless keyboard or can't remember decimal numbers for every accented character.

Good suggestion. I don't think HTML entities will work everywhere though, e.g. in question titles and comments. For example: ú


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Would a Tag for Arduino IDE version be helpful?
I've only been playing with the Arduino for a relatively short time, and until recently, it's been very sporadic. I asked a question recently which got the response to try out the latest Arduino 1.5.x as I'm (still?) only using 1.0.5.
Is there enough difference between IDEs to support an IDE version tag? Would it be useful or would it just get in the way?
I know that if it did exist, I probably would have used it already (by looking at questions so tagged) to see what issues those people are having, what libraries don't work, etc etc.

Not really.
Is there a tag for each build number of Windows on Super User? No. That's because there are too many versions.

Is there enough difference between IDEs to support an IDE version tag? Would it be useful or would it just get in the way?

There's a reason they call them "minor releases." They're... well minor. Most of the differences between versions deal with simple bug fixes, compatibility with new boards, and a few other libraries. IIRC the serial library was updated with Arduino 1.0, but I'm not sure. However, that was a major release (i.e. the first number was changed to signify a big change), so it had a few large changes. I'd imagine that nobody uses something below 1.0, it's kinda like asking should we put a Windows ME tag on Super User?

I've only been playing with the Arduino for a relatively short time, and until recently, it's been very sporadic. I asked a question recently which got the response to try out the latest Arduino 1.5.x as I'm (still?) only using 1.0.5.

Overall, it's not really necessary. Comments work fine... even if the OP says that they have the newest version a common response might be:

Double check that you have the latest version (maybe try the new x.xxx beta version?) and try reinstalling the IDE and any libraries you imported.

I don't feel it's necessary, if it's that important it can be in the body of the post or in the comments. One thing people forget a lot is the purpose of tags: to make finding related items easy. If we split them up, people will have to subscribe to fifteen different tags instead of one. I like the idea of having fairly specific tags, yet not too specific so it's that perfect balance that makes finding data easier.

I wouldn't call 1.5 a "minor" release personally. For me a tag could make sense if the question is about a specific feature of version.

@jfpoilpret Yes, it was a bigger release, but still there's no need to add one hundred tags and make every user tag their question with their IDE version, even if it's not applicable. Plus, not many users know their IDE version off the top of their head. You're forgetting the purpose of tagging. It's to help find a topic quickly. If I need to find all IDE questions, I don't want to have to enter fifteen tags in the search bar. Comments, as they stand, work fine when we need clarification.


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Requesting further review
Mods - I'm writing this in Meta because the site is limiting me from writing out my full request. Please re-review my answer to this question.: First Arduino Uno - Immediate Problems
A mod wrote "It is a question eliciting further information."
Actually, it is a full answer. I pointed out some missing information that seemed - and was, in fact - relevant, AND I went on to offer the correct solution, as stated by the OP!: to load the missing drivers, which I had also located. I believe this is an/the appropriate answer. So did the OP as he stated in a followup comment. With the OP stating it solved his problem, how is this not an answer?!
You've asked me to review my answer, my flag, and the moderators' denial, and I have done so. Now I am asking you - several of you, please - to review all of the foregoing, and tell me why an answer, accepted in writing by the OP - still deserves to be demoted.
I am asking you restore restore my answer. It deserves a place next to other answers, and it/I deserves an opportunity to be upvoted and/or selected, just as does any other answer that solves a problem does.
On a site with the standing of Stack Exchange, please don't tell me that moderation is considered mistake-proof, is final, and may not be peer-reviewed. Without any intention of blowing my own horn, I ask you to review the all-time standings; I didn't just wander in here yesterday. Your users - my peers - apparently feel that I add some value here. In this case, the OP has stated so, too.
I believe this disagreement deserves an honest and fair review by both sides. I have thoroughly reviewed my contribution and I stand by it for all of the foregoing reasons. I am asking for a similar honest and thorough review of the facts by the moderation team.

write an answer now

The proper sequence should have been:

Ask for more clarification in comments, and make suggestions
The OP tries them and confirms what works
You write an answer that details what turned out to be wrong, why it was wrong, and what the fix is.

What you did:

Write an answer that asked for more clarification, and made some suggestions.

What we did:

Convert your answer to fit the proper pattern.
Fend off your moaning.

Feel free, now parts 1 and 2 of the proper sequence have been completed, to fill in part 3 by writing a proper answer detailing what was wrong, what the fix is, and why that is the fix.

Oh dear. There don't seem to be any winners here. I agree with Majenko that the first sentence of your answer would appear better put as a comment under the question. That is what comments under the question are for.
I don't see any problem with the rest of your answer except that it doesn't really address the "access denied" issue. However answers should not be deleted just because they are wrong. I suggest you make another answer which focusses on answering the question, and also put further queries about whether or not the OP has installed drivers as a comment.
I am going to remove comments which don't seem to be appropriate under our Code of Conduct.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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Can you use Circuit lab in the Arduino forum
The Electronics Stack Exchange has a built-in button to a free version of Circuit lab. It's not a bad little tool for creating simple circuit diagrams. I don't see a way to do that in the Arduino Stack exchange, at least not directly. I had to cheat, create a throw-away question in the EE Stack exchange, export it to a picture, then post THAT, which is quite convoluted.
If not, could Stack Exchange add that feature to the Arduino boards? It would be very useful and appropriate.

This is a duplicate... Personally I don't think the SE team will do anything until we graduate out of beta or show a real need for this. I'm not quite sure if we will get this or not... :/

You can start a question or answer in EE.SE, then draw the circuit, then copy the text insert to arduino.se, without saving the EE.SE question. Disadvantage is that you can't save the circuit. I am quite disappointed that Arduino.SE doesn't get a C/lab module (or similar.

Why is the Arduino SE in beta, and what does it take to graduate? And given that the Arduino is a hardware development platform, it seems obvious that circuit diagrams are a necessary tool.

@AnnonomusPenguin, the thread you linked is not really a duplicate. It was a question on "How do I create circuit diagrams on the Arduino SE." My question was specific to wanting Circuit Lab. I marked it as a feature request, and I think it has merit as such.

@DuncanC the other question is also a feature request. I'll still poke someone higher up though, if that would make you feel better. However, since we're still in beta, they usually don't grant us features like that unless we show an extreme need for those tools. We're in beta because, to add new SE sites, it goes through Area 51 where users can post and vote for new proposals. When it meets certain requirements, they use a template and launch the beta site. There really isn't a real set of requirements as it is determined on a case-by-case basis: SE wants the site to not fail.

@AnnonomusPenguin In the discussion at the time I wrote my question, I was strongly adviced not to pick a specific solution (called Circuitlab) but make it a generic request for a circuit editor.