text:
Provisional Community Moderator Nominations
We already decided some attributes that the  moderators should have, now let's start actual nomination.

Actually, knowing Arduino too well is far from necessary. They should
be knowledgeable, yes, but anything more is just a bonus for the
community and their efforts should be focussed as such ;-)
What is needed in a community moderator is the ability to communicate
clearly and effectively, as well as have the patience to handle all
types of members of the community respectfully. Also, to function
impartially even when faced with difficult situations such as that may
happen involving respected members, arguments, flame wars, etc.
Community moderators aren't referred to as janitors for nothing. There
is a fair bit of work to be done behind the scenes, a lot of which may
be fairly involved and taxing. The only reward for this effort is
seeing the site grow and move towards graduation (which can be rather
satisfying :) )
The only thing necessary is that the individual should be active and
involved in the community through content generation, meta
participation, chat availability, editing, reviewing and voting
(close/reopen). Also, in general the individual should be helpful and
guide new members of the community wherever needed.

How do you become a provisional moderator for this site?
Soon after the site launches into "public beta," the Community Team will appoint provisional moderators from this community until the community is ready to hold its own elections (once it graduates from beta).

What do moderators gain?

Candidates will be contacted and three of them will be selected to act
as provisional Moderators until the community holds formal elections
after the Beta period. Besides the normal abilities of a Moderator,
they will:

Have access to a special chat room where we will collectively work through the challenges of moderation and community self-policing.
Organize the process of selecting the site’s attributes (the [help center], site scope, tags, etc.).
Rally community support and drive the mission of getting publicity for the site.

Essentially, they will have the ear of the Stack Exchange team for
anything we can do to help their sites succeed!

Here's what you should have to be a moderator here:

Have a decent reputation
Participate on Meta
Be well spoken, polite, professional (that includes formatting it with bold and other tags to make it look good and spelling/grammar), and a natural leader.
Be trusted. You'll have some data that a standard user won't. Handel it wisely and follow the TOS and privacy policy of SE.
Have a decent amount of time (30+ minutes a day has been recommended to this site only for "dirty work.")
Exhibit those intangible traits discussed in A Theory of Moderation.

Bonus points for:

Moderator or high-reputation on other sites
Area 51 participation, social network referrals, or blogging about the site.
Members who have already shown an interest or ability to promote their community.

To nominate (You are encouraged to nominate you and others)
Please break it down into one section for each item listed below:

Post an answer containing the URLs to the user's main and meta profiles on Arduino.SE. You can also add links to other profiles or to an Area51 profile. Also, if you
Why you think they/you would be a good candidate.
If you are nominating yourself, please add a little bit about you, why you would be a good candidate, and if you really have the time and devotion to guide this community, when it's fun, and when it's a pain in the **********.

Post each user as a separate answer, and add multiple answers if you wish to nominate multiple users. Do not make duplicates of questions.
Additionally, if someone nominates you, please edit the answer to indicate your approval (or declination). If you want to, add a paragraph or two about yourself so we can get to know you.
If you downvote a particular nomination, you are encouraged to share why you did so in the comments, though you are not required to do so. Optionally, you may do the same for upvotes.
For more information, see this blog post.

Optional Template:
## I'm Nominating: {Username OR "Myself, {UsernameHere}"} ##

**Links:** [Main (1 Rep)](www.example.com), [Meta](www.meta.example.com), [Other Sites Here (100K Rep, Moderator)](www.othersite.example.com)

{Put Flair Here if you want}
*****
I am a good candidate because... I do... I want...
*****
{Optional (remove the "****" above if you aren't doing this): Getting to know you here}

That went by fast. I was gone for 2 days and i missed it.

@TheDoctor Yes: it was quick because it happens when we go into public beta.

This is now obsolete because the nominations are over.

I'm Nominating: Myself, Peter R. Bloomfield
Links: Main (~900 Rep), Meta, Stack Overflow (~3k Rep)

profile for Peter R. Bloomfield on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/2918160.png

Why me?
I believe I'm a good candidate because I have past experience of managing/moderating online communities (mostly forums). I also have an academic background, with a few publications in the computing field, so I can communicate well in writing.
I believe in being civil and respectful, and that we should strive to make newcomers feel comfortable here. I always aim to remain objective in the face of disputes and disagreements. With that said, I know that it's sometimes necessary to take a hard line.
I've been a little hesitant to nominate myself for a moderator role, simply because I'm fairly busy already. Realistically though, I should certainly be able to average at least 30 minutes per day without any difficulty.

More about me
I'm one of those weird people who somehow still enjoys programming, despite doing it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. By day, I'm a professional Software Engineer; hardcore C++ is my proverbial bread and butter. My focus as a research/programmer over the past several years has been educational technology and virtual environments.
I've had to do a little embedded systems work at my job, but electronics is mostly just a hobby. I find Arduino to be an excellent platform, because it can provide a fairly gentle introduction to the area, but it's also very capable for more advanced projects.
I should maybe note that there is actually more to my life than just computers. I have other interests too! I'll stop rambling now though. :) If there are any questions, feel free to ask.

You seem to have a lot of experience with coding, but not much with EE. Arduino needs both: can you adjust to make up that gap?

@AnnonomusPerson experience and knowledge with the subject can be helpful for a moderator and shouldn't be ignored, but you don't have to be an expert on the subject to be a candidate. Judging by Peter's contributions around the site thus far, I think he's a fantastic candidate

@AnnonomusPerson The EE stuff I've done in my job (and am still doing) is actually a sizeable bare-metal AVR project, interfacing with multiple external systems. It really goes much deeper than I suspect most Arduino.SE visitors are likely to need.

@PeterR.Bloomfield Sorry I'm just looking at the EE.SE profile of yours... :P

@AnnonomusPerson I'd completely forgotten that I'd created one! I've never really had to refer to EE.SE as a questioner, and I don't think I have enough to contribute there as an answerer (compared to EE professionals).

I agree with @AnnonomusPerson that some EE knowledge is essential for any good Arduino.SE moderator. As a measurement, I was looking for good answers from the candidates on SE.EE. If he or she manages to post a few great answers there and not getting beaten up much, I figure the candidate at least know what a great answer is when he or she sees it. While Annonomus Person meets that requirement, his last comment doesn't make him a worthy moderator candidate. While Peter doesn't pass that SE.EE requirement, he's got a good amount of activity in Ar.SE and shows he's nice and fair. My vote is his.

I'm Nominating: Myself, sachleen
Links: Main (1200+ Rep), Meta

I am a good candidate because...
I really want this site to succeed. I started electronics with Arduino and I want to help other people, beginners or otherwise, get off to a good start, too. I'm very active on the site, and I like to think my answers provide a examples of what a "good" answer looks like.
Some examples:

Why does my sketch report too many button presses?
Serial data showing up weird

I also make an effort to stay on top of the review queue. I have some experience with this from SO, where I have over 1000 edits and hundreds of other review related tasks. I bring over the same habit to Arduino.SE. I'm on the site every day trying to help wherever I can.
Check out my recent activity on the site to see what I'm up to.

Questions & Answers
Ask your questions in the comments and I'll answer them here.
What sets you apart from the other candidates here? - Annonomus Person
There are a handful of people here that are just as capable as me and would make excellent moderators. I'm not trying to win votes, I trying to help the site succeed. I will continue to use the tools available to me to make the site a better place, moderator, or not.

@AnnonomusPerson, Thanks! I added a response to your question in my post.

I'm Nominating: AsheeshR
profile for AsheeshR on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1609527.png

I think Asheesh is a great candidate because he meets all the criteria specified in the nomination, more specifically, those below:

He's got a decent reputation
He participates on Meta
He's well spoken, polite, professional (that includes formatting it with bold and other tags to make it look good and spelling/grammar), and a natural leader.
He can be trusted.
He's already shown that he's got a decent amount of time to dedicate to us (30+ minutes a day has been recommended to this site only for "dirty work.")
He's got high-reputation on other sites
He's got Area 51 participation
He's a member who has already shown an interest or ability to promote our community.
And he's very knowledgeable about Arduinos.

My vote is his.

Thanks for the nomination. I would enjoy working on the site and taking it forward. I participate in a few beta sites which has gotten me a fair bit of experience with regards to what works, and what doesn't. I am sure that this experience will help in carrying out the work that will be needed.

Asheesh is also a moderator on RE.SE

@Ricardo Thanks for the very kind words. This post almost made me want to vote for myself :)

@AsheeshR - Well, you deserve them. Too bad you didn't get elected. I guess the problem was the timing: just like regular questions, those who answer first have higher chances of getting upvoted and accepted. But I'm sure you'll keep acting as a moderator, so we are all winning anyway :D

@AsheeshR - Since I nominated you, I could't vote for you because the system didn't let me. So I was counting that you would vote for yourself and that would count as my vote. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Somebody else voted for you, besides you and me, then.

@AsheeshR - Next time, you, sir, nominate yourself right when the nomination period opens. If someone nominates you, you make sure you vote for yourself. In elections, every vote counts. You're young so you will have to brag about yourself to get great jobs, so start practicing ASAP.

Hi, I'm Annonomus Person and I'm nominating myself for this community election started by me
(I'm personally voting for HiChris123)
Links: Main (452 and Counting Rep), Meta, EE (1,235 Repuation)

profile for Annonomus Person on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites http://stackexchange.com/users/flair/1640390.png?theme=dark

Area 51 profile for Annonomus Person http://area51.stackexchange.com/users/flair/76333.png?theme=dark

Why I feel I'm a good candidate (in bullet points for better SEO :P):

I'm fairly active on meta: 6 questions and four answers. That alone isn't that great, I know. I'm almost ashamed running for moderator with that. However, it's what you can't see that makes me stand out. I go the extra mile, with 14 edits on one CWiki post, trying to make our tagging get off to a good start.
I am the only user that has fully participated in any of these sites: Robotics, EE, and RPi. These three sites are the ones that are almost guaranteed to have scope conflict. Moderators shape the community, and moderators need to be informed. I'm definitely informed.
I try hard, and never give up. I want this site to succeed. I was the part of the Arduino beta last time, and I was annoyed when it was shut down. I'll do what it takes to get us through beta. I need to shape my little corner of the world. It's my calling, my duty, and my responsibility.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
  The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things
  differently.
They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status
  quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change
  things. They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the
  world, are the ones who do.

I may be a crazy round peg who sees things differently, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid.

I will rewrite the Arduino engine to use jQuery (just kidding)
You can eat a waffle if I'm moderator any time of the day! MMM waffles... nom nom nom.  Waffles... yummy! Unless you like pancakes better.
I will do a full cleanup of the tags (already kinda messy but that's natural with any beta)
I am a grammar and spelling jerk natzi (not to be offensive to anyone, it's an American English thing) freak loving person.

Read more about me on my profile

Why I shouldn't Be a Moderator*
*Yes, the first time in recorded history I did actually do that in a moderator election.

I prefer pancakes Not really... no need for all the controversy, @Undo!!! :P
I haven't ever used moderational tools or had full edit capability (exception: last Arduino beta for editing without approval). However, I adapt quickly.
I probably might not always have time to put in 10 hours a day. I'll try to do at least 30 minutes daily to empty the queues. I do have a seven page activity log, though. I don't know if I have the patience or time to be in chat 24/7 either, but I'll try. I am now the biggest user of Pin 13 (A.K.A. Arduino Chatroom).

Despite the above, I feel that I would be a legendary moderator. I have vision, dedication, and perseverance. If you elect me, I can almost guarantee that I will make this proposal live. I'm a trustworthy person who will make this site succeed. EDIT: As time progresses I seem like the more ideal moderator.
No Arduinos hurt in the making of this.

-1 Sorry but your comment on Peter's nomination isn't what I expect from a moderator (I quote: @Peter Haha I just saw that and none of your answers so far dig into deep electronics so... Oops! –). You got to be nice and fair to be a decent moderator.

@Ricardo I was referring to his EE Profile. ;) I never intended for it to be rude, but looking back it could be interpreted a few different ways.

Ok. I'll take back my downvote in appreciation for your retraction. Knowing when to apologize is a desired characteristic of a great moderator. Just gotta be extra careful with what you write, especially if you want to be a moderator. One lousy comment here and there is ok for regular users but not for mods.

Nope, can't remove the downvote unless you edit your nomination.

@Ricardo I updated some numbers... you don't have to remove it though if you don't want to. If you would rather have the others be moderators, I would favor the community being better off than me getting moderator.

No sweat! I'm sure you'll be a great moderator, as all other folks who were nominated. We all want this site to be the best it can be. I guess that being a mod has it's own learning curve. This was just one step up the ladder.

@Ricardo Thanks for your support! Note: there are always mod decisions that aren't supported... :D

Nice try, but he is Jeff Atwood, the StackOverflow and StackExchange founder, mod of the mods. He is the Dangeon Master. He has the luxury of being unpopular sometimes. We don't ;)

Next will you compare yourself to Jon Skeet, the Chuck Norris of SO? :P

@Ricardo Yes he is forgiven, but really, -192 votes? That's pushing his luck.

You can have my vote if you agree to not clutter the site with large pictures of waffles that make answers longer than they rightfully should be.

@Santa Sorry about that... I was just hungry! :) Anyway, I won't do that. When I add pictures, they are usually relevant (with an exception of this one here).


text:
Does anyone know anybody on the Arduino Blog?
We've already looked at Who are the notable bloggers in the Arduino community, and how can we get them involved?. One blog not mentioned was the Arduino Blog itself, which is a big influence in the community. If we could get a link on the blog, we could get a lot of traffic and new members  because the blog is read by many people.
Do you know (or are) a blogger on the Arduino blog? Do you have a friend who knows the bloggers of the Arduino blog?
A mention on the Arduino blog would go a long way in taking this site forward.

Zoe Romano seems to be the main author on the blog.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

While there certainly are Moderators here, a significant amount of the moderation is done by ordinary people, using the privileges
they've earned by virtue of their contributions to the site. Each of you contributes a little bit of time and effort, and together you accomplish much.
As we enter a new year, let's pause and reflect, taking a moment to appreciate the work that we do here together.
To that end, here is how the moderation done here on Arduino breaks down by activity over the past 12 months:
                 Action                  Moderators Community¹
---------------------------------------- ---------- ----------
Users suspended²                                  3          8
Users destroyed                                  72          0
Users deleted                                     7          0
Users contacted                                   7          0
User suspensions lifted early                     1          0
Tasks reviewed³: Suggested Edit queue            36      1,491
Tasks reviewed³: Reopen Vote queue                0      1,003
Tasks reviewed³: Low Quality Posts queue          8      2,175
Tasks reviewed³: Late Answer queue                0        874
Tasks reviewed³: First Post queue                 0      4,185
Tasks reviewed³: Close Votes queue                0      6,622
Tags merged                                       1          0
Revisions redacted                                1          0
Questions unprotected                             0          1
Questions reopened                               16         26
Questions protected                               1         35
Questions migrated                               37          0
Questions merged                                  5          0
Questions flagged⁴                                6        719
Questions closed                                511      1,488
Question flags handled⁴                         142        583
Posts unlocked                                    0         11
Posts undeleted                                   4         70
Posts locked                                      3        169
Posts deleted⁵                                  594      2,640
Posts bumped                                      0      5,281
Comments undeleted                                1          0
Comments flagged                                  0        597
Comments deleted⁶                             1,192      2,116
Comment flags handled                           175        422
Answers flagged                                   2      2,130
Answer flags handled                          1,582        550
All comments on a post moved to chat             32          0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Arduino without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 3 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 3, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁴ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁵ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁶ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Wishing you all a happy new year...

One may ask: "Why do we even need moderators?". Well, the answer is simple: people need someone to complain to.  Without someone to complain to they will just explode, and that would get messy.

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


text:
Should moderators be censors?
Yesterday I have seen one of my posts deleted by one moderator with one comment to justify deletion.
I don't deny the justification for deletion (my post was little more than a link to a very good reference URL).
HOWEVER, there was no prior notification or warning, hence I was given no chance to improve my post before deletion.
Since I could still access it, I did perform edits on this answer, but it looks definately deleted, is that correct?
Hence my question: should we accept that our moderators exercize censorship so easily, and without any prior warning?
Shouldn't there be rules of conduct for moderators regarding censorship?
For example, I have seen a few answers with rather rude language being there for long before being edited, and I did not understand why moderators took so long to edit it (I had myself commented to the poster that he should edit his post, which he clearly did not care about).
A problem I see with such beahvior is that, if moderators start getting too keen on easy-going censorship, then I doubt the site will be able to keep its participants for long.
Indeed, it is important to keep in mind that Stack Exchange sites are here for people to help each other, and this is "best effort", some people just don't have enough time to write lengthy answers with all details but feel they can still help with their "simple" answers.

If you're ever unhappy with a mod's actions, feel free to ping us from the chatroom to ask that it's reconsidered.

I considered that, but I never go to the chatroom (question of personal preference, I'm always afraid to get addicted and spend my life in there...) But I will force myself to do it if this happens again.

The mods just delete the competing answers to get more rep.

Particularly with the kind of new site that this is, it's going to be necessary to accept that a lot of questions will best be answered with a link to offsite resources which are far more established as parts of the arduino world that this site is - specifically, resources that people should probably be reading before posting questions.

@ChrisStratton - One of the reasons why the main StackOverflow site is successful is because it is the best reference; because lots of users invested the time to write useful, informative, questions and answers that were substantively better than Google's top result. The best answers here would include (if license allows) or summarize the key parts of the off-site information.

If you're ever unhappy with a mod's actions, feel free to ping us from the chatroom @PeterR.Bloomfield - how do you even do that? I can see the chatroom, but I don't see how to address a question to moderators in that way.

Is this how? You go into chat, choose your favourite moderator (heh) and then try to start a new chat room with that moderator?

@NickGammon See the chat FAQ section on Notifications. It's worth noting that the pings don't always work when someone hasn't been in the chatroom for quite some time (which unfortunately is often the case for me these days as I don't have as much time for moderator duties as I used to).

There was nothing there about ping in particular (except typing) but don't worry. Hopefully I won't have to use it. :)

This whole situation from a moderator's perspective:
(I wasn't the one to delete this answer.)
Yes, it does seem like it might have been handled differently (i.e. turned into a comment). However, here are some basic reasons to justify that:

You can get the answer undeleted by either flagging (you have enough rep) or by creating a new answer.
You seem to be an active user across the network, with 6K rep on SO. It would seem like you should know that link-only answers aren't acceptable here.

Code of condut: It might also been an accident. I'll be the first to admit that moderators aren't perfect. Do we need a code of conduct? No. We have superiors that if we need to be removed, we can be removed. If you don't like one specific action, you can bring it up here (Why did this answer get deleted) or ask us on chat. A code seems too much work, and it can't be enforced. It'll have to be a "honesty policy" type of thing, because the mods can't legally release all of the data to enforce something like this.
Your edit did greatly improve the quality, so I undeleted it and removed the comment.

For example, I have seen a few answers with rather rude language being there for long before being edited, and I did not understand why moderators took so long to edit it (I had myself commented to the poster that he should edit his post, which he clearly did not care about).

Why didn't you flag it? It seems like we take care of 99% of flags in the first hour and a half after they are flagged. We can't reread every post every time someone adds a comment. Also note: one of the incidents with swearing were when we didn't have mod yet and couldn't do anything about it. There were several cases of this.

Before flagging the "rather rude language answer", I just recommended its author (through a comment) to moderate his statement, comment which he just turned down with a "no, why?" that I found quite disrespectful, hence I decided to stop there as I did not want to pour oil on the fire.

@jfpoilpret In most cases it's best just to flag it in the first place. If you want to flag and add a comment, go ahead, but with most cases like that so far they required moderator attention.

First off, let's look at your answer:

I think you should really read Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?, written by Shog, one of the Community Managers for Stack Exchange. In this, he says:

Strip the markup, and this is what you're left with:

i think you should take The tutorial HERE! This will help you a lot

Is there even one tiny speck of information there? No. Even the
title of the page being linked to would have provided something to
go on, but that was entirely too much work.
So let me be clear: this sort of response is not an answer. If
you see this, flag it. Moderators, if you see it flagged, delete it.

Yes, your answer was a bit more than just a link, but not much more. The mod who saw this "answer" realized that, and deleted it and left you a comment. Sure, it could have been left undeleted and just had that comment... but is there really a difference? You just flag for undeletion whenever you've improved it. You see, we really can't have bad answers on the site, and might just be left around for days upon days, making the site look bad.

Hence my question: should we accept that our moderators exercize censorship so easily, and without any prior warning?
Shouldn't there be rules of conduct for moderators regarding censorship?

You have something fundamentally wrong in what you're thinking. Censorship and deletion are two different things. Censorship is when it's material that you think the world should know, but the people in charge think it's bad for the world to know that. Deletion on Stack Exchange is simply saying Oh, this is a bad answer or a bad question. If it gets improved, it can be undeleted. However, it's not a good enough post as of now.
Regarding rules for moderators - there are some rules that a mod has to follow. However, the main thing is just use your own judgment. If a mod mistakenly does something, either another mod will bring it up to them or you can flag it as other to bring it to their attention.

For example, I have seen a few answers with rather rude language being
there for long before being edited, and I did not understand why
moderators took so long to edit it (I had myself commented to the
poster that he should edit his post, which he clearly did not care
about).

Again, there's something different you could have done. You could have edited the offensive content out of the post. That's why there's an edit button at the bottom of every post. There's some things that the community can handle themselves, and editing is one of them. Moderators are supposed to be human exception handlers, not the person who does everything for their site. So, if you see something you can fix, fix it! If you can't fix it, and you need a moderator to do something, flag it for their attention.

I never denied the fact could have had some more content, but I felt this specific article was useful for everyone to know, and I could not just copy its content as that would be called plagiarism. I just complained about the "no prior warning". Regarding the second point, I am against censorship myself so I would not edit that specific part of the answer; I use edit only to improve answer contents (review typos, grammar, or add some more details). For me the best way as to let the poster know about it and let him fix his post himself, which seemed a better way, although it did not work.

@jfp It isn't concidered plageism if you cite your source and you rephrase it.

In the interest of openness, I would like to say that I had flagged the answer as NAA based on an accepted policy for link only answers that holds across the network. I completely agree with the moderator action taken in this case and I do not think there was any overreach here. The problems on letting poor content stay up are far more severe, than the effort that may go into an early deletion and undeletion after improvement.
I flagged it after giving it 12-18 hours, which would have been sufficient time in my opinion to go back and write a proper post. In any case, you are a 6k user on Stack Overflow, so I expect that you would be aware that such answers are considered very low quality and are in general not-acceptable. A recent post by Shog on MSO, reiterates the same.
Moreover, there is an answer draft feature available. Any answers that you are working get automatically saved by the SE editor every 45 seconds. If you intend to improve on an answer later, type a draft, work on it, and then post it when it has sufficient content to qualify as an answer.
I don't mean to be harsh, but there is no excuse for posting poor content, especially if it doesn't even live up to very basic quality standards. If you were extremely pressed for time, and yet wanted to help (as all of us do), then you could have posted your "answer" as a comment, and later come back and formed a proper answer, or let someone else develop an answer based on your findings. After all, the intention is to generate and share knowledge, and that would easily be served this way as well.

Duly noted. Thanks.

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


text:
Expiring 3rd party content
Check this question: How to compile code for the Arduino Due?
Now look closely at the referenced pastebin documents:

http://pastebin.com/EK9bmc1Q expires in 6 days
http://pastebin.com/2GCXP0L1 expires in 6 days
http://pastebin.com/t8dcYy8q expires in 6 days

Attributed as "too big for the question".
This renders the question useless for new visitors in 6 days. What can we do to prevent valuable content rotting away within a week?
For me it is reason enough to not look into the details of the question, I don't want to go through the effort of figuring out what is going on / how to solve it if the question is rendered useless for new visitors.

For me it is reason enough to not look into the details of the question

I agree. It's the responsibility of the OP to give only as much information as necessary to explain the issue. This question is a little different than most that we see like this, but still full output may not be necessary. In this example, there are a lot of duplicate lines that can be removed.

I am especially concerned about the fact that the majority of the question content will disappear in little under a week, rendering it useless to others. If the expiration was unlimited or the content was available on a platform SE can control, then the issue would be entirely different.

I think both issues are related: if the OP has made a minimal investigation, then he should be able to limit the amount of input to put into the question, thus he should not need pastebin.

I would suggest we set up a policy regarding use of pastebin or equivalents:

comment to the OP requiring to reduce code/output size to a correct amount and edit his question accordingly (within some early deadline, e.g. 2 days)
[optional] if someone can help with the question then he could edit and paste back the necessary code into the question
if after the deadline, nothing has changed, request to close the question (with maybe an additional comment to clarify why)
after the pastebin code is not available anymore, delete the question (moderator)

How have the people at stackoverflow solved this?

@jippie - StackOverflow requires example code in the question itself; not at PasteBin, JSFiddle or some other site. There are programmatic checks and close reasons for questions which don't contain their own example.

First of all, we as a community should guide our beginners. The past few weeks I've been wondering if a guide to formatting and asking good questions. The help center only goes so far. We should be able to post this whenever a new user doesn't follow these "standards."
One thing that we should teach is how to use coding conventions. White space helps out reading if done correctly. We should teach how to use the site formatting tools and enable syntax highlighting. We can help them along the way with most of this with edits. How this relates the the question is: we should add a section to it explaining to post code inside the question.
If a question that has too much code, we should add a close reason to the system for no prior effort for not locating the part of the code that isn't working. This close reason would apply to the question you mentioned. It is not acceptable to post one thousand lines of code and then expect us to fix it.
However, I do not believe we should delete these questions with lots of code. We should first move the code to the question, and only delete if it expires and we don't have code.  The OP could still debug the code and go through the process of reopening if they wanted to. Deleting will just scare away new users. We can create guides to help them, but we shouldn't scare them away, nor shoold they make us do all the work.

"One thing that we should teach is how to ..." I'm so happy that for once it is not myself who sounds like the grumpy old man ;o) I do think you have a good point though.

The OP has improved their own question by putting the PasteBin content directly in the question - this is exactly what should be done. The internet will be a better place with code examples and explanatory text in the same place.
StackOverflow requires example code in the question itself; not at PasteBin, JSFiddle or some other site. There are programmatic checks and close reasons for questions which don't contain their own example code.


text:
User rep discrepancy
I have noticed for several users that there is a difference in rep between the personal profile page and the Users overview page? I have noticed it for different users, one of which is myself. The difference is alway 101 ('Association Bonus'+1).
What is the cause and will it be solved?

+1 noticed that as well with my account.

The Users page shows reputation gained from participating on the site in a given period of time (by default, a rolling month).
The 100-point association bonus and the initial 1 point everyone starts with aren't included in the "reputation gained in the past [week|month|quarter|year]" views, but is included in the final "all" view:

Still the Arduino stack is less than a month/quarter/year and these numbers are incorrect. Only 'all' shows correct numbers. My association bonus is dated Feb 12, I'd expect to see it in the month view. Good news is that the rep is not entirely lost.

@jippie As I said, the association bonus isn't included (on purpose) in the views that aren't "all".

Ah I missed that sentence. Thnx for explaining.


text:
Project Showcase '14: Detailed Information

To celebrate 10 years of Arduino, we are proud to start the first event ever on Arduino Stack Exchange. The Project Showcase '14 is finally here! In case you missed it, see the earlier post. We hope you are ready ;-)
This post covers all the information not covered on main. TL;DR is that participate as you would as if this were any other post (within the spirit of the event), and you will be fine.

This contest is about sharing and creativity. Your entries may be anything that you may have recently worked on, the complexity or the difficulty level doesnt matter. What matters, is how much effort you put in and how much you enjoyed the process.
Rules

The contest submissions must follow the submission format (available on main).
Each submission must contain only one project.
Only first two submissions by a user will be eligible for consideration for the prize.
No major changes beyond grammar, punctuation, formatting should be made to a post after initial posting. All major changes will be rolled back, and the post will not be considered for the prize.
The winner will be the submission getting the maximum number of upvotes (downvotes do not count) and will get a Stack Exchange T-shirt*! There will be something for the runner-up as well. The runner-up will be decided at the discretion of the event organizers.
The event organizers cannot win the event.
Decisions of the event organizers will be final and binding.

Guidelines

This is about showcase and critique. Post feedback on others' submissions via comments. Suggest improvements and changes. We are here to help each other improve and grow.
Please keep the environment positive and encouraging for everybody. Any rudeness will not be tolerated, and may lead to disqualification.
Do not engage in strategic voting or sockpuppeting. These may result in site bans.
Most importantly, have fun!

Also, don't forget to spread the word! Tell your friends and colleagues. The more people that participate, the more interesting its going to be!
Return to main post.
Questions & Clarifications

Do projects using bare AVRs count? Official boards, clones, and derivatives that utilize at least the main Arduino library are acceptable for entries. This means your ATTiny with Arduino bootloader is okay, but your ATMega328p running only AVR C or Assembly is not. It must involve Arduino!

This post may be updated during the event. Any major changes will be announced on main.
*Certain restrictions may apply. International shipping may take a few weeks.
This event is being organized by Peter R Bloomfield, Annonomous Person, Sachleen and AsheeshR.
The logo is a derivative of the Arduino Community Logo licensed under Creative Commons license CC-SA-BY-NC 3.0

What are the specific requirements for qualifying as "involving" Arduino?
There is a LOT of latitude there.

What if a project just uses the optiboot bootloader?
What if a project is compiled using Stino
What if a project is compiled using the "Bare GCC" Stino option I implemented, which disables most of the default arduino interrupts, and requires that the programmer implements int main(){} themselves?
Note: You can still use the Serial libraries without the default interrupts via this option. Does that qualify?

I have lots of project that are basically what I describe above. Optiboot bootloader, compiled with Stino, the only "arduino" thing I really use is the Serial library, and then that's just for debugging purposes. I think I could probably reasonably argue this is within the bounds of the rules, and yet I don't think it's realistically eligible.

For that matter, what about editing the arduino source files? I could make a project that looks exactly like a simple arduino project, that does something completely different by modifying the template folders. That would satisfy the "use the main arduino libraries" requirement. You should probably clarify that the arduino files have to be stock.

Realistically, I can't really see this contest even really working without any hardware requirements. I think a much better contest would require the use of one of the actual arduino boards.

Thanks for the feedback! We had initially started with only Arduino board based projects, but considering this was the first time and we weren't completely sure of the response, we decided to keep it fairly open. Also, most of the competition was thought of assuming good faith on the part of members of our community, which is why the submission criteria are quite flexible. If there is a next time, feel completely free to participate in the  organization and formulation of the rules regarding the event.

Another question:
Does adding better pictures (by replacing the existing pictures) count as a "major" change? I'd like to take a better camera to work tomorrow and get better images of the boards in my post.
The images would be substantially the same, just with less blur and glare.

If they're pretty much the same, sure.


text:
How can we encourage new users to narrow down their problem? Could we improve the help center to fix this problem?
We've been getting a lot of questions recently when users dump hundreds, or even thousands (yes, this has happened) of lines of code into their question without even narrowing it down. This is simply not acceptable. We have lives, too, and we can't always find the problem by skimming code.
Some things that they could do:

Create many methods so everything flows and it's easy to read
Follow one coding convention throughout all of the code... this code is hard to read (not that it really does anything) because it has different styles:

void setup () {
one.function();  }
void loop ()    {
delay ( 500 ) ;
digitalWrite (5, HIGH);
}

Although this one is minor, it seems only helpful to possible answers to stick to one coding convention. Also, if no convention is followed, it sometimes shows that the OP copied a bunch of code and mixed it up, and when it didn't work, they copied it to our site. Don't get me wrong, not all of these questions are this way, and I'm not saying if they followed a coding convention that it would be a good question. Unless I'm wrong, it's usually expected to show prior knowledge of what you've tried, and not doing anything doesn't follow that practice. We're a site targeted at newer users, and I can see these questions becoming common. I may be overreacting, but I just am genuinely concerned about the quality of some of these questions.

With many methods, they could send data to the serial window between each function that's called in main() printing out variables. Then, they could narrow it down to a few lines of code that mess everything up.

It's hard to explain this to a new user, but SE's expectation is to include in your post what you've tried. I don't want our site to turn into a wasteland of questions that're unanswered. Even 200 or 100 lines of code IMHO is too much... even if it's a 40 line sketch it would help a lot to narrow it down to five or ten lines. If a user can't narrow it down to a portion of their code, then they are probably talking a too big of project.
So what can we do about this? I've been thinking that we could add this to the help center somewhere, or create another meta post tagged faq, and show new users it. We could add a few examples to that post explaining how to narrow down a problem.

Lets not force a specific set of coding conventions on people. I personally follow BSD style, and would not like to be asked/told to use a different style philosophy.

@Asheesh I wasn't saying we should enforce a specific coding convention. I (although I didn't emphasize this as well as I though) meant that people change coding conventions in one sketch. An accident is an accident, but really, four different styles? It seems sometimes like they copied code, edited a bit, and when it didn't work they dump 300 lines into their question and ask "how to fix this code." I may be being too critical, but as far as I know you're supposed to show prior research on SE, and many of these questions just don't.

Personally I'd like to see comments on people their scripts. That way we'd get an idea of what it should do right at that moment and we can see if someone misunderstand a command.


text:
Let's get some free advertising for our site!
For those of you who are avid Stack Exchange users you'll know that most graduated sites have a place for free community advertising for stuff like open source software, other SE sites, and other stuff that the community is interested in. Obviously we can't get it on our site since we are still in beta, but we could and should get some ads for our site.
They're refreshed every year, and they are just getting started up again so it's a great time to start. This post is to brainstorm where and what we want to advertise on the SE network. Feel free to add some sketches and ideas.

Electrical Engineering.
We have a similar scope to theirs, but we cover slightly different areas. This could be a great way to drive traffic to our site.
Edit: it seems like someone has already done this. Cool!

I have seen several "migrated rom Electrical Engineering" I believe that it is a good site to advertise on

Robotics
Quite a number of Arduino related questions are already being asked there, so there is a lot of overlap in scope.

That isn't a graduated site yet, otherwise it would be a great candidate.

What if we created more of an application based photo.  When I need to wire, I go to Electrical Engineering, when I need to work on motor control and algorithms I check Robotics, and when I need to program I use stack overflow and sometimes Arduino.
I mainly think of Arduino as a site which helps in applying the Arduino to specific applications.  Does that make sense?
We could feature some type of cool hack or apparatus that someone has built.  Or a meme of an Arduino controlled project that gets people interested.


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

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

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

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


text:
Find us on social networks
Social networks are a great way to get the word out about our site, and hopefully attract some more interest. To that end, I've setup a Facebook page for us here:
http://www.facebook.com/arduino.se
If you're an FB user, please like and share the page, and feel free to make suggestions about what we do with it. The page belongs to all of us, although for obvious practical reasons only the moderators will have direct admin rights on it.
To get us started, I've already setup an event on it for our upcoming Project Showcase event.
Please also feel free to suggest other ways we could represent/promote the site on other social media.

There's an Arduino community on Google+. It's not specifically for us, but it is a general Arduino page. Some people also ask programming questions on there, and I think it would be a good idea to point them to our site, maybe even asking a question for them and showing them a link later.

Here's the Arduino SE Twitter, @StackArduino: https://twitter.com/StackArduino. It doesn't have have any tweets yet, though.


text:
What is the elevator pitch for Arduino.SE?
From The 7 Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta

Imagine you’ve just gotten on an elevator with a friendly stranger. You
  have precisely one floor to describe your community to them. What
  would you say? The elevator pitch is a brief sentence that describes
  what your site is about. Every word counts!
Once decided, it can be sliced and diced to form:

the tagline
the motto
the blurb under the logo
a convenience redirect “nickname” for the site
perhaps eventually the domain name in some form

(Due to a variety of practical difficulties with domain names, we
  prefer to de-emphasize domain name selection. Most sites will retain
  their topic.stackexchange.com names indefinitely.)
Naming is hard — really hard. But if you can come up with a sensible
  elevator pitch for your community, it’s a great starting point.
For more detail see: Stack Exchange Naming for Dummies

Arduino: Electronics for makers made easy.

or

Arduino: Practical microcontroller powered electronics without a BSc.

Is the question asking us to create an elevator pitch for Arduino or Arduino.SE? I think your answer adresses the former, but should address the latter.

i would change the first to "Arduino: electronics made easy", plus, what is a BSc? (i've googled the answer, but that's not good for motto!)

Arduino.SE: The Adventure begins where the books and tutorials end!

runs

Got an Arduino question? Arduino.SE can answer it!

or

Got an Arduino question? Get it answered at Arduino.SE!

or

Got an Arduino question? Arduino.SE is the place to get your answers!

That's what I think an Arduino.SE elevator pitch should sound like. Don't you think?

These are vague and don't really describe our community as a whole. It should intrigue the person who sees this and want to join our site, not just "oh yeah it's cool come and join us." This doesn't differentiate us from any other forum-like site.

@AnnonomusPerson Yeah, I guess I didn't get what the question was about. I'll delete the answer altogether...

Leave it for reference.

Arduino: Yes! You can!
It may be too short for some of the things, but for moto 2-3 words is perfect size. It is remmembered and pronounced easy. Plus if you start describing something to someone that isn't much into it already, you can lose his interest very fast. Generalized messages like that are more prone to engage a person to delve into the matter. Even if someone have sceptical opinion.

For example:

What, do you want to tell me, you can build a robot with it?
 Yes! You can!
How about a plane or hellicopter?
 Yes! You can!
Hmm, how about to make my car or house talk?
 Yes! You can!
Sounds intriguing. I'll look into it... and thats my floor.

If we need to sell the site to more people, then we need to sell it. Not to desribe it.
The above example can be changed a little bit for questions about the site itself.

Can I ask there how to do a awesome X?
 Yes! You can!

It could be with different tone:
Arduino: For all of us!
Certanly at any case, it shouldn't be dry narrative.
EDIT:
I propose something like those or combination of them:
All things Arduino! Hardware! Software! People!
All things Arduino! Ideas! Hardware! Software!

or variation like that:
Everything Arduino! Hardware! Software! People!
Everything Arduino! Ideas! Hardware! Software!

I believe that it is descriptive enough, as it basically is summary of the site and still simple and short to be easy remembered and to stuck in the head of people. If we try to be specific, we always will omit something important or we will make it too long. Also on the picture linked by  Annonomus Person, most sites have description about one row, so I believe it will fit there nicely.
P.S. If you like it, or you agree with the general idea, please do post your own opinion or your own sugestions and/or variants. More people participating, the better.

A great idea: it encourages the user and it does imply a call to action. However, I disagree with this: Certanly at any case, it shouldn't be dry narrative. Yes, it shouldn't be dry, but we need to describe who we are, too. It should be a little bit longer that can be cut down into different parts. Also, it might be formed into the site switcher "snippet" (image), and "Yes, you can!" doesn't fit at all. You should try to add something else to it.

Well, I aknowledge the shortcomings for something so short, to be description. But the core of my post was, that in this case it should be little bit (or more) like marketing, than pure engeneering. "Site about small form factor open-hardware board for easy development etc." - this kind of description simply will never work very well, if at all. No matter how short or long it is, or how acurate or not it is. This was what I meant by "dry narrative" But you really got me thinking about it now :) I will update my post with new suggestion.

Nice edit: (this is a tedious process: I updated my answer four times already) but have a few suggestions: 1.) Ideas! We don't really supply/discuss ideas here, but I guess it could work... 2.) Would you really say "Arduino! Hardware! Software!" to a friend? I love your more modern approach, but it seems like we need a combination of yours and something like mine so we can make the more boring text (for things like the site-switcher) but use yours for advertising: a slice-n-dice is what most sites use.


text:
Should we make a canonical "How to send data using serial?" question?
I have noticed that there are a lot of questions that are like "How can I make my Arduino send data to my R program?" "How can I make my Arduino send data to my C++ program?" "How can I make my Arduino send data to my Processing program?" "How can I make my Arduino send data to my Matlab program?"
Because the Arduino part of the question is almost always the same (How can I make my Arduino send data to a computer), should we make a canonical "How to send data using serial?" question, and close others as off-topic?

I think we could really benefit from a one-stop list of how to interface with Arduino's serial output in a variety of languages.

Related: http://meta.arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/1245/can-we-get-some-canonical-questions-going


text:
Do something about [optimisation] tag?
I just noticed the optimisation tag, and two possible problems with it.

"Optimization" is far more common than "optimisation" in both American English and British English, so it should probably be optimization instead of optimisation.
It is vague. In this case it was used for code optimization, but it could be used for for energy use optimization, circuit simplicity optimization, etc.

What should we do with this tag?

Now it's status-completed.
Changes:

Edited question and renamed to code-optimization
Added synonyms: code-optimisation → code-optimization

I've declined to do anything with the vague optimization tag. Since the question was edited, it's an orphaned tag. If there's another type of optimization that comes up (i.e. energy), we can change add synonyms for the different spellings.
The reason for that is if I would've added optimisation → code-optimization and optimization → code-optimization, any time a user adds either of those tags, it will, without warning, replace the tag to code-optimization. IMHO this is a major flaw in the system. It should warn the user.
A quick note: from searches, it seems like spelling it with a z is the most common way, but is still widely used. However, since SE is a US based company, we'll stick to US spelling. I know that Stack Exchange has users and countless countries, but it's simpler to stick to one version of English spelling, the one that's built into the engine/code base.

Adding a synonym for [tag:optimisation] --> [tag:optimization] shouldn't result in it being re-tagged as [tag:code-optimization]. It may suggest it as a possible existing tag, but it shouldn't automatically change it (unless there's a pretty serious bug...)

@Peter Haha, oops editing it now. I meant [tag:code-optimization] for the second tag in the paragraph. See updated post.

I would just retag that question to have code-optimization. optimisation could be made to be a synonym of optimization, but that seems unnecessary to me.


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

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

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

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

Bad answers
Wrong answers
Incomplete answers

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

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

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


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

Screen 1:

Screen 2:

Screen 3:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for your explanation.


text:
Arduino at the movies
I was watching a rather cheesy disaster movie this evening (a terrible film - Collision Earth - very formulaic, I could write the script blindfold) and spotted an Arduino (well, some red Arduino Uno clone, probably R2 looking at the location of the reset button) in one of the props.  It forms, supposedly, part of the communication system of a space ship...

Does anyone else know of any instances of an Arduino or an Arduino Clone being used as a prop in a movie?

Oh, and while kind of on the subject, I recognise this PCB from somewhere. It's from the same film, but I know the PCB. They're normally in a rack of loads of them (in the film they are, too, but backwards). I swear I've seen it before somewhere from some teardown maybe.  Anyone have any hints?

The 2nd image looks like telco equipment.

Yeah, I was wondering about a POTS line card, but it doesn't have the right connectors. From what I see it's only got a card edge connector, and all the POTS equipment comes in rectangular racks.

Yes, I just immediately saw the multiple small transformers without big caps and other power-supply components and imagine they are for telecom transmission, plus the card looks like standard telco interface cards (http://www.msln.net/guides/images/equipment/westell.jpg) with the exception that the card-edge is on the "bottom" rather than the "back", taking the LEDs as being on the "front".

It might be that they are reminding me of the cards in a data IO programmer (https://youtu.be/9MIzbTpdt80) purely from the shape.

Someone on Electronics SE might recognize the second board. I don't, personally.

They may. I don't want to disturb them with my inane ramblings though. The question of what that board is is rather unimportant - just curious. The main question is, has anyone else spotted an Arduino in a film?

I decided I should start a fandom wiki on the topic of PCBs in bad films.  https://movie-circuits.fandom.com/

It somewhat reminds me of those shutterstock images of "people doing electronics" as in https://imgur.com/gallery/OQndy
Picture Nr. 4 also has an Arduino in it. Or the replica/fake bombs used to add extra game elements to airsoft matches. As in https://www.hackster.io/draymond/prop-bomb-for-paintball-airsoft-8ea257

Not an Arduino, but quite humorous anyway...
This is from Christmas Icetastrophe, another really bad disaster flick (yes, I am a fan of really really bad movies - they are so hilarious).
This is supposed to be a "detector" that can "find a hot meteorite" that landed on earth.

Except it's plainly the board out of a router. A cable variant of whatever router, since the DSL interface isn't populated.  The closest I have come to it is that it's a D-Link router.  A Mediatek MIPS chip in the middle, with a DRAM chip below it, and the WiFi interface under the shield.
Oh, and a few LEDs stuck through a bit of plastic wired to the battery pack in the bottom left.
Hilarious!

Funnily enough, I was going to post this as a question myself, but didn't know where to do so...
In Silicon Valley S02E03, Gilforth is reading the Arduino Projects book and has an Uno and a shield on it. At the risk of sneaking in a question within an answer, what shield is it?

Looks like some LCD shield of some form.

I thought that, maybe a 1602? But without the buttons on the ROBOT shield.

Probably, yes. It is probably white on blue as well.

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much appreciated, it is, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Please post a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example

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

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


text:
Is there a generic way to add default Arduino syntax highlighting to every post in the whole Arduino Stack Exchange?
You can do this (preferred):
<!-- language-all: lang-arduino -->

or this:
<!-- language-all: lang-cpp -->

to the top of every question or answer to set syntax highlighting for that entire question or answer, or this just for the code block that follows:
Code block 1:
<!-- language: lang-arduino -->

    void setup()
    {
        Serial.begin(115200);
        // some more code
    }

Code block 2:
<!-- language: lang-bash -->

    # random examples
    arduino-cli help core
    grep 'some regular expression' /some/file

but shouldn't this be turned on by default for the entire Arduino Stack Exchange instead?
Samples:
Here's what the above 2 code blocks look like, just for demonstration purposes:
Code block 1:
void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(115200);
    // some more code
}

Code block 2:
# random examples
arduino-cli help core
grep 'some regular expression' /some/file

References:

Syntax highlighting language hints

I completely agree that Syntax colouring makes the code much more readable, particularly for people who are new to coding.
I usually add the C++ language directive just above the code block to activate syntax-highlighting for the code:
<!-- language-all: lang-C++ -->

For serial monitor output, error messages and the like, you do not want syntax highlighting (but you do want it to display in the grey "code" box). You can disable the highlighting by placing this above the code block:
<!-- language-all: lang-none -->

Alternatively you could use backticks to indicate the start and end of a code block:
```cpp
void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(115200);
    // some more code
}
```

will look like this
void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(115200);
    // some more code
}

For sections where you do not want syntax highlighting, you can disable the highlighting by placing a normal code block.

The advantage of the c++ tag is that both the question and the answer get syntax hylighting without needing to add any directives.

Yes, but what language? Your examples shows two: C++ and bash.
Some code blocks show output from the terminal monitor which should not (generally) be coloured at all.
If you tag your question with the C++ tag that it gets the C++ (ie. Arduino) colouring automatically.

I was just thinking we by default do Arduino (C++) syntax highlighting, and require manually setting it for anything else. Alternatively, I suppose we could just tag every question with Arduino code in it with the C++ tag? Or, what is preferred?

Some people even post (ugh.....) python.

One thing that I have often wondered about... do the question tags affect the syntax highlighting in answers...?

It appears to, yes. See here as an example. Neither the question nor the answer have the special "language" comments, but both are syntax-highlighted (and the question has the C++ tag).

What is preferred? - I usually tag questions with code in them with the C++ tag, but have been ticked off in the past because the "question is not about C++". Perhaps, but if it has C++ code in it I think the tag is reasonable. After all, people who want to (or are able to) answer questions about C++ syntax may well search for such tags.


text:
2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Arduino over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

All comments on a post moved to chat
6
0

Answer flags handled
233
35

Answers flagged
4
264

Comment flags handled
35
5

Comments deleted⁷
735
576

Comments flagged
0
40

Comments undeleted
28
0

Escalations to the Community Manager team
1
0

Posts bumped
0
1,620

Posts deleted⁶
425
1,221

Posts locked
1
36

Posts undeleted
11
31

Posts unlocked
0
4

Question flags handled⁵
40
34

Questions closed
459
212

Questions flagged⁵
14
78

Questions migrated
24
0

Questions protected
8
16

Questions reopened
50
6

Questions unprotected
1
0

Revisions redacted
2
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
4
358

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
0
540

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
0
1,433

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
2
201

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
1
201

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Reopen votes" queue
14
83

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
39
323

Users contacted
4
0

Users destroyed³
222
0

Users suspended²
2
15

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Arduino without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


text:
2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we welcome 2021, and in keeping with tradition, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Arduino over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
6
9

Users destroyed³
8
0

Users contacted
12
0

User suspensions lifted early
2
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
219
617

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
86
118

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
146
305

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
70
437

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
1,256
1,255

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
332
869

Tag synonyms proposed
0
1

Revisions redacted
2
0

Questions unprotected
1
0

Questions reopened
15
0

Questions protected
98
12

Questions migrated
38
0

Questions merged
1
0

Questions flagged⁵
2
152

Questions closed
758
72

Question flags handled⁵
116
38

Posts unlocked
10
19

Posts undeleted
5
48

Posts locked
24
52

Posts deleted⁶
482
1,533

Posts bumped
0
2,128

Escalations to the Community Manager team
2
0

Comments undeleted
1
0

Comments flagged
2
56

Comments deleted⁷
844
1,677

Comment flags handled
48
10

Answers flagged
63
590

Answer flags handled
598
55

All comments on a post moved to chat
42
0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Arduino without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2019: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

A big thank you to Shog9 for writing the queries and script to facilitate fetching and posting this data to all the sites in the network, and to Brian for the subsequent work making the whole thing more user friendly.
Wishing everyone a happy 2021!

regarding moderation https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2633/can-we-change-the-close-reopen-vote-threshold-from-5-to-3


text:
Are “thank you” or similar notes allowed in questions and answers?
Are "thank you" or similar notes allowed in questions and answers?
I believe that they are frowned upon on some other engineering (stackexchange) forums.

Questions
Saying things like "Hi!" or "thanks in advance for answering" are frowned-upon, partly because they just clutter up the question. Also it's a bit cheeky in a question to thank people for an answer, it sounds like you are putting pressure on them to answer.
You will probably find some higher-reputation users removing such notes from questions, although I think if you are going to edit a question, you should be making more improvements than just removing "Thanks" from the end of it.
As Jeff Atwood noted there are better ways of thanking people for their answer like:

Voting up good answers
Accepting the best one
Helping the person who answered you by answering one of their questions if practical
"Pay it forward" by helpfully answering someone else's question

Answers
I'm not sure why you would put "thanks" in an answer. Who are you thanking? However again,  it just adds to the clutter to do it.
Comments
You are not supposed to make a comment to simply say "Thanks!". A more appropriate response is one of the ones above. The person answering will notice the reputation boost from voting up their answer, and certainly if you accept the answer it is clear who did the accepting.
However if you have something useful to say in a comment, then adding in a "thank you" won't do any harm. For example:

Thanks for that great answer. I found that if I increased the sampling rate it worked even better.

In that case you are contributing to the answer with your technical note, and slipping in a "thank you" at the same time.

Just wanted to check if such comments being removed, be an improvement for the site. If removing unnecessary texts that are frowned upon benefit the site?


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However:

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

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

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

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