text:
I lost 10 reputation today. Our newest moderator, Juraj lost 510, Majenko lost 170. Who was the "deleted" user who was responsible?
When a "sock puppet account" up-votes other users, they should at least have the common courtesy to ask the "up-voted user" whether or not they want the reputation, before they start up-voting them.
I have said publicly that the reputation on the Stack Exchange Networks has absolutely no value, unless collecting fake internet points stimulates that part of your brain which craves it.
Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation. Last time I checked, Stack Exchange Reputation is NOT accepted at my local gas station, grocery store, or anywhere else in Canada.
FWIW, you can go to each user's public profile page and filter by "reputation" to see who lost the most rep. Here's a good place to start: Arduino Users.

about voting: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote

as I learned in Help Center there are two different messages: "User was removed" and "voting corrected". this time it is "User was removed"

@Juraj - The about voting page says this "Voting is so important that there is a variety of badges associated with different aspects of voting – like casting your first upvote or downvote, using up all of your allotted votes in a day". I agree that there are not enough legitimate votes on this stack, and it's been a 4 year issue: https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2474/are-we-a-little-stingy-about-upvoting-questions With 17,570 votes to date, I am doing my part: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&filter=all

Why is this even troubling you? I lose 10 reputation every now and then, sometimes because an account is deleted, sometimes because someone disagrees with an answer I give, and sometimes because they don't like me.

This is what I posted on MathOverflow Meta: Is it possible to know the list of removed users? Briefly: If the user was deleted after the last update of SEDE, you can download the list of users from there and do the same next week (after the next update). If the user was removed before the most recent update, you won't find out from SEDE.

@Martin - Thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction. I've forked your query with minor modifications, and will re-run it next week and see if there is a change. Your answer on MathOverflow Meta is excellent, and should be required reading for every SE moderator. Arduino SE is a small stack, so using 15 rep and up returns far less records then the 50K limit. https://data.stackexchange.com/arduino/query/1440753/find-all-users-above-given-reputation?rep=15

It is impossible for us to know who the deleted user was. But "user was removed" is itself a very loose term.
It may have been a user that was deleted by the system for voting abuse. In general though users are deleted by a manual action by us moderators (destroyed as a spammer, for example) or manual intervention by the community moderators (our bosses).
It is far more likely that the user decided to delete their own account. Maybe a "rage quit" (we've all been there and done that) or just reducing their online presence.
As Nick has noted, reputation is less about personal reward and more about the smooth running of the site. Having to earn privileges through good questions and answers means that only people that have earned some level of trust gain access to more advanced features - which helps reduce abuse by new (or "sock puppet") users.
Voting for questions and answers is not about rewarding the users (the bounty system is for that, which you may notice is seldom, if ever, used), but about grading the quality of content. Once you have earned the amount of reputation you require to unlock the facilities you want there is little point to reputation from a personal perspective, but from the site's point of view the voting that creates that reputation is invaluable.
If people don't vote for your answers (because you told them not to) your answers won't be seen as good answers on the website, since others will have higher votes. Even if your answer is by far the best answer, if it's not been voted up that answer is of less worth (and less likely to be read) than a poorer answer.
In short: voting is the core principle these sites work on. Reputation is merely a side effect and a way of controlling new users' actions.

I just imagined the reputation hurricane if VE7JRO decides to delete his account because he doesn't like how the site works

@Juraj - "hurricane"? That's funny, considering you were the person who lost the most rep (551) from the latest "purge" of fake votes. 551 rep in 30 days from one user to another must be considered excessive by the system, so I see why SE invalidated the rep. I have up-voted at least 132 of your answers over a period of several years, which is what, 1,320 rep? Doesn't sound like you would be affected too much by a VE7JRO exodus "hurricane".

@Majenko - "but from the site's point of view the voting that creates that reputation is invaluable." -  I agree, and I do my part by voting, 17,570 times last time I checked: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&filter=all The lack of legitimate voting seems to be a 4 year old issue with this stack: https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2474/are-we-a-little-stingy-about-upvoting-questions It's a shame that more "veterans" don't up-vote more. It would create a bigger pool of users with the ability to approve edits, vote to close, etc. Thank you for your answer.

@VE7JRO what 30 days? Invalidated rep has "voting corrected" (for example dannyf  Dec 9 2020)

@Juraj - Part 1. The 30 days refers to the period of time when the majority of the lost reputation by a high percentage of the 2,000+ rep users on our network occurred. The removed user who cost you 500 rep yesterday: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/users/37622/juraj?tab=reputation&sort=post&page=1 may or may not be the same one you lost rep from on 2020-10-02: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/users/37622/juraj?tab=reputation&sort=post&page=3 To a regular user like myself, it's very likely the account was created a long time ago, and all of a sudden it is being used for nefarious purposes.

@Juraj - Part 2. The "fake votes issue" has been going on for a long time here on our stack, as you are well aware of. To refresh your memory, you said: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/50445713#50445713 and also said: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/50479244#50479244 When you read the entire history of the Pin 13 chat, it would seem that you are the right person to figure out what's really going on here.

@Juraj - Part 3. I see the difference in the message I received "User was removed" and that of user dannyf "Voting corrected". If you read the definitions of each: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/user-was-removed , https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/serial-voting-reversed , you'll see that "User was removed" is a serious offence, where as "voting corrected" says this "Should I be concerned about these correction statements on my profile?...

@Juraj - Part 4. "...No, not at all. It's only an indication of reputation change. After all, we can't control the actions of other users. It's very rare where we'd run across a user who was intentionally using votes to manipulate their own reputation, and most cases you would have already been contacted separately if we thought that was the case. As long as you're not intentionally abusing the system to manipulate someone else's reputation or your own, you do not have to worry about such entries - they're just an indication that the system is doing its job.".

@VE7JRO some time ago users could not delete their account. they had to request a mod to do it it. google search returns old meta answers on this topic. but now maybe because of the GDPR a user can delete their account.

A "sock puppet" account is one which is literally controlled by the same person, like a puppet on your hand. So for example, if I made a second account called "John Gammon" (using a slightly different email address) and then whenever I made a post I got my "John Gammon" account to upvote it, that would be a sock puppet vote. Clearly that would be unethical, as no person, other than myself, was voting for it.
In that case, I would hardly need to get permission from myself to do the upvote, as it was me doing it.
However if a different person, Joe Bloggs, just happens to think I am wonderful and vote all my posts up, then this isn't a sock puppet vote. That is just an admirer. The Stack Exchange algorithm for detecting sock puppet votes might not be able to distinguish between the two, however.

Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation

That is certainly admirable to want to help people, however the whole idea behind Stack Exchange is that good answers are voted up, and bad ones voted down. Asking people to not vote up your answers, if they are good, defeats that mechanism.
Next, you'll be asking people to not accept your answers, because that also gives you reputation. However accepting answers indicates that your answer solves their problem.
The up-vote is not so much to give you reputation (that is a side-effect) but to mark the answer as good and useful.

Who was the “deleted” user who was responsible?

I don't know the answer to that. Not even moderators can find that out. I suggest, though, that new users don't just go around voting hundreds of posts up willy-nilly. It might look to "the algorithm" that they are sock puppet votes.

You tagged this question "grow-up-se-rep-is-worthless". It isn't worthless — it is the basis of the entire system. Without reputation, you may as well have the to-and-fro of a forum. With a forum, it is hard to see which are the good answers and which are the rubbish ones. The reputation system (and the voting) is specifically designed to let third parties know whether they should trust one answer over another one.

"Next, you'll be asking people to not accept your answers, because that also gives you reputation." - No, I won't be asking them to do that, and I never suggested it either. Where did you come up with that idea?

You said Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation. Well, if people accept your answers you get reputation. Apparently something you don't want.

No, I did not say "please don't accept my answer, I said Please re-read my first paragraph. Those are two completely different things. Accepting answers closes questions which is a good thing.

"Apparently something you don't want. " - Once again I must ask, where are you getting this from? Show me anything I have written that says I don't want to earn reputation for a good answer.

I have a question about: "However if a different person, Joe Bloggs, just happens to think I am wonderful and vote all my posts up, then this isn't a sock puppet vote. That is just an admirer." When I read this page: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/help/serial-voting-reversed, it says "intentionally voting merely to reduce or inflate another user's reputation is considered abuse.". My interpretation is that voting for "...just an admirer" or "an admirer just voting for you" because they "like you", is a violation of the TOS with SE. Can you clarify this for me?

Once again I must ask, where are you getting this from? - You said in your original question above: Please do not vote for my answers. I help people because I want to, not for the reputation. Your point is so obscure I don't understand it. You are asking people to not vote for your answers, but then you say you want to earn reputation? How, pray, are you going to earn reputation if you ask people not to vote for your answers?

Can you clarify this for me? - yes I agree, if you collude with another user to vote each other's posts up, that may well be a violation of the TOS. However it is not a "sock puppet" as such. You can't usefully ask a sock puppet not to vote for you because the sock puppet is yourself. Unless you like talking to yourself. See Sock Puppet Account - Wikipedia - they define it as someone who operates a false account pretending to be someone else when they are really themselves under different names.

RE: "how pray..." - You earn 15 rep when your answer is accepted, you earn 10 rep from an up-vote (from a honest user), you earn 2 from editing a post and those with rep for accepting an edit, etc. You can earn up to 1,000 rep without asking or answering a question.

RE: "Joe Bloggs" - In your example, let's assume you havs a 2nd account called Joe Bloggs, your sock puppet account. Joe Bloggs up votes your posts, but he also up votes other users posts (like mine). Maybe Joe Bloggs thinks this will hide what he is doing. The fact that all of the user's posts were deleted, all rep removed from all those up-voted, and the "stronger" message "User was removed", it is quite likely it is a sock puppet account. I remember a user who deleted their account (rage quit) during the period of time I was a moderator. SE kept all the posts and people kept the rep.

RE: "just happens to think I am wonderful and vote all my posts up, then this isn't a sock puppet vote. That is just an admirer."  - Is it against the SE rules to up-vote a persons answer just because they admire them?


text:
Pin 13 chat room is frozen
A moderator can unfreeze it?

(and the question wizard requires some more text)

Ok, try it now...

I left you a test message in the Pin 13 chat room.

and the question wizard requires some more text

What is the "question wizard"?

it was just a dummy text because so short question is not allowed

still frozen. the field to enter a new message is missing. I added a screenshot to question

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Current questions counts based on close state, answered and score and about Roomba
Based on the quality of some of the new question we see every day, some users think we collect trash here on Arduino SE. But we don't collect it all really. Stack Exchange system has a cleaning process nicknamed Roomba (as the robotic vacuum cleaner). Roomba deletes closed question without answer 10 days after asked. Roomba deletes unanswered questions with negative score 30 days after asked.
Today I made for me an overview of questions count based on close state, answered and score. There were 23764 questions total at that time. I used advanced search with queries like closed:yes answers:0 duplicate:no score:1..1.
Questions (not closed) with at least one answer:

score
count
% of all questions

score 2 or more
4570
19%

score 1
5253
22%

score 0
7432
31%

negative score
1189
5%

Questions (not closed) without answers:

score
count
comment

score 1 or more
2877
13% of all questions

score 0
462
one dovnwote will make them ready for deletion

negative score
26
roomba will delete them soon if no upvote happens

Closed questions (not duplicates) without answer:

score
count
comment

score 2 or more
42

score 1
151
one dovnwote will make them ready for deletion

score 0 or less
57
roomba will delete them soon if no upvote happens

We have 437 questions marked as duplicate. Roomba only deletes "closed as duplicate" questions with negative score and no answer. There are 121 duplicate questions for which one dovnwote will make them ready for deletion.
We have 1177 closed (not as duplicate) questions with an answer. It is 5% of all questions.
Voting on questions is important. Their score decides the deletion. Many times one vote makes a difference.

If anyone is interested, then the full conditions to the Roomba cleanup are here: The Community user deleted my question! What gives?

and even a Roomba Forecaster user script exists https://stackapps.com/questions/7239/roomba-forecaster-when-will-the-question-be-roombaed-if-it-wont-why

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


text:
Trivial questions must be off-topic
The Meta sites associated with Stack Exchange sites are full of discussions about on-topic/off-topic and what is a question worth to answer and stay. Arduino SE is a technical SE site and a large part of questions are about coding. So we can look for directions at Meta of the Stack Overflow (SO), the first and largest SE site. Even there the discussion continues, but some things are clear which here aren't.
One thing are trivial questions. In coding these are questions with missing braces, questions with typos in code, other syntax error questions, questions with 'code blindness'. These are off-topic on SO and off-topic on Arduino SE simply because they are pure coding questions (which should be asked on SO).
Then there are questions which, only after clarifying the details in comments, turn out to be trivial. This are sometimes closed on SO as 'not reproducible', because the problem went away.
These questions shouldn't be answered, if they are answered the answer shouldn't be upvoted. This allows the cleaning process nick-named Roomba (as the cleaning robot) to delete later this question + answers.
So we can help the seeker of an answer to a trivial question in comments or even in answers, but let the Roomba delete it later.
The example of trivial question for electronics would be, I think, a ground not connected where it definitely should be or 'not working' unpowered device.
One example outside of technical SE and not clear first for an outsider is that on Movies SE, movie identification questions are off-topic. If someone asks "I saw long time ago this movie where .... Do you know the title?", they close it, because the site would be full of this if they didn't. But of course they put the title in a comment.

This question is probably a reaction to a comment I made on a (now deleted by the author) post, in which I said that comments under questions are not for answering questions.
I referenced this post: How do comments work
Stack Exchange is not a forum and is not intended for ephemeral questions (like, "how do I fix this trivial issue") which are answered in comments and then deleted by the author. You can use a forum for that, and in particular The Arduino Forum.
Either one of two things will be true:

The question is a good question. It deserves an answer, and the question and answer(s) will stand to help people in the future. Like a knowledge-base. In this case make an answer. Other people may make different answers. People vote on the answers. The highest-voted answer will float to the top. The person asking the question will hopefully "accept" one of the answers.

The question is not a good question. It should not be answered in a comment. It should be downvoted, and eventually closed and deleted.

I have a Meta post How to ask a good question for Arduino Stack Exchange. You can reference that.
If the question is borderline useful (for keeping) then you can improve it yourself. Perhaps change from a very specific example to a more general example.
You could also make your own reference question that covers the points raised, but not the specific example, and explains in some detail how to resolve this particular point.

Attempts to answer in comments, and allow the user to delete the question, basically turn you into an unpaid consultant. No-one else is helped, because the question is then either deleted by the OP, or auto-deleted as you seem to be suggesting is a good idea.

"Comments are used to ask for clarification or to point out problems in the post." the code could have other problem then the trivial one. the user didn't know it is a trivial question. I think it was a case o 'code blindness'. on comment the user fixed the problem pointed in the comment and there was no other problem. case closed.

"Problems in the post" is different to the problem being posted about. A problem in the post would be grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting of code, incomplete statement of the issue, not enough information and so on. This isn't referring to a "trivial problem being asked". If the problem is a missing semicolon in the code (say) then either make an answer pointing that out, or vote to close the question as being too trivial to be asked.

the SO community didn't make the rule for fun. there is experience behind it. many times the trivial errors in code are only remains of debugging attempts and there is a real problem in the Question. so clearing trivial errors is clearing problems with the post. there should be no trivial errors in the post. if after clearing trivial problems there is no other problem, case closed. how many times OP doesn't write in wiring description that they have the grounds connected? do you want every time to write an answer about grounds not connected?

How many times do I have to say this, I wonder? As per this Meta SO post comments are not for answering a question. You can't spin that around and say that you can answer trivial questions in a comment. The whole model breaks down if you answer questions in comments. No-one can vote the "answer" down or up. No-one can suggest improvements to your "answer". If the question is really trivial vote it down - don't answer it. You are training people to use SE as a quick syntax-error solving forum.

I didn't answer the question. I pointed out a trivial error in he code snippet. I can't know if it is the only problem since it is too obvious

The "No answer in a comment" rule is not optimally formulated (IMHO). In the case of trivial or low value questions it has the effect of forcing a formal answer, in the worst case, reams of text saying something blindingly obvious, or leaving the OP without any form of response until the question is automatically deleted. Neither are particularly satisfactory. Why not use the comment to give a response to help the OP say a quick fix, a more focused search phrase for the OP to try, or a recommendation for another forum. Maybe also including a signal to other potential responders and downvote.

If you are going to write 50 words as a comment to answer the question, I don't see the difference between typing the same 50 words into the answer box. Then the system considers the question answered, and we don't keep getting reminded a year or two later that this question doesn't have an answer.

If you think the question is hopelessly bad, don't answer, or vote it down, or flag it for migration or deletion. But don't answer it in the comments. It is explicitly disallowed here.


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Suspicious upvotes
User dannyf gets every day since October upvotes on three to five old answers. That makes around 2400 points in two months.
I flagged the last upvoted answer but the flag was declined maybe because my description of the problem was too short.
EDIT: I noticed it as I visited the Users page and Majenko was not first there as always. (I was on the way to Majeko's profile for the Evils of String link.) So I was curios what good answers the user wrote to get so many points this month.

@Majenko, the upvotes continue

This has been raised with the powers that be.

Update: Your suspicions were correct and the votes have been reversed.

there is a new case. per1234 gets 3 upvotes on old answers almost every day. I know Per from arduino forum and I am 100% sure he is not doing it. it must be a fan.

and dannyf again

now Edgar gets too many upvotes on old questions. somebody is playing with SE

now Peter Bloomfield has 3 upvotes every day


text:
Should Arduino SE participate in the '1-rep voting' test?
Stack Exchange plans to test '1-rep voting':

Reputation required to cast upvotes is changing from 15 to 1
Reputation required to cast downvotes is changing from 125 to 1
The 1 reputation cost to downvote answers will be removed

Link to the Meta question: If more users could vote, would they engage more? Testing 1 reputation voting on some sites
Should our Arduino SE participate in the test?

Personally, I think this is probably a bad idea.
It's practically an invitation for new users to create a few sock-puppet accounts in order to boost their reputation and gain access to other site features.  And if they have even a basic knowledge of how to use a VPN that would be very hard to detect and/or prove.
Moreover, I suspect that the change would encourage "revenge downvoting".  If someone is upset or angry about a comment on, or criticism of, their question they can simply search for questions / answers by the commenter and downvote them.  Having been a mod on another site, I know this already happens.  At the moment it's relatively rare, but if those restrictions were removed I think it's almost inevitable to become a lot more common.
Even good questions and answers on Arduino:SE don't attract that many votes, so it wouldn't take too much to devalue the score of those questions / answers.

I'd also ask whether SE will help rollback any damage caused during the trial period if/when the trial is deemed to have been unsuccessful?  Or is that something that Arduino:SE would just have to live with going forward.

thank you for your answer. obviously I will not upvote it :-), but thank you. We have now better tools to detect voting fraud and with more fraud they can be developed further. Now we don't have any vote fraud cases on Arduino SE. We fight only 'charity' voting. In answer to comments on Meta Catija stated that if there is damage it can be fixed.

@Juraj  We don't have any vote fraud cases on Arduino:SE that we know of.  We were only able to spot the cases we did find when I was a mod because they were lazy, careless, and blatant about what they were doing.  If they had been a bit more careful, and a bit less obvious, we would never have caught them.  No matter how good the tools are, a reasonably careful, tech-savvy individual will get away with it.  Now, that shouldn't impact the wider community much - unless there are a lot of people doing it.

@Juraj how is charity voting fought?

@NikeDattani as usual. reverting votes, sending warnings, eventually suspension

@Juraj but how is "charity voting" defined and detected? Also are you sure that the votes can be reverted? Votes can be reverted when actual serial voting is detected by the nightly scripts, but cannot be "manually" reverted in any other case, other than sockpuppet voting in which all votes between the sockpuppet master's multiple accounts will be reverted. But if I vote for your answers for "charity", it won't be possible to revert unless I do it serially and obviously enough for the nightly scripts to detect it, right?

@NikeDattani any irregular voting can be reverted by CM (Inauthentic usage policy)

@Juraj not only does it seem that you completely ignored my question, but what you said in your response is also wrong.

@NikeDattani sorry. The charity voting is just visible as any unusual voting. at least on Arduino SE. It was reverted so it must be possible.

@Juraj the screenshot literally says that the votes cannot be reverted, manually. They can only be reverted if the voting fraud is caught by the nightly scripts, which was not what happened in this case. I can show you the rest of the conversation if you need to see it. Also, you still haven't explained what you mean by "charity voting". It's surely not just any unusual voting, because when someone unusually downvotes a bunch of questions from one user, there's no "charity", but it's still considered voting fraud because it's targeted against one user.

@NikeDattani that is not what the screenshot says. it says they require a larger scale of targeted votes to revert them. and I stop responding about this topic here. If you want to know more, please open a new Meta question

If you don't want to reply anymore, that's up to you, but that does not make you right. You literally said "any irregular voting can be reverted by a CM" and you have also admitted that you were wrong about that when you said irregular voting can only be reverted if it's on a "large enough scale". So it's not true that any irregular voting can be reverted. Irregular voting can only be reverted in certain circumstances. Also, the screenshot literally says "we lack the technical capabilities to remove these votes". The "larger scale" part is about nightly scripts detecting fraud.

I think more people voting would better indicate quality of the posts.
Arduino is for beginners so most of our users ask questions which members with higher reputation don't find interesting. Many of the answers are only interesting for beginners without reputation points on SE, so now there is not enough voting and many times a random upvote or downvote is the only vote and not balanced by more voters.

"Arduino is for beginners" (@juraj). Yet the tone of responses by the more experienced, toward beginners who haven't caught on to the differences between an SE site and a forum, or who haven't formulated a "good, answerable, question" in the "ASE approved way", is too often off-putting. They are to me, just reading them, and I'm not a beginner with ASE or Arduinos. Sometimes it reminds me of [a related SE site] that could get outright hostile to any but the "elite", for anything less than a question that was deemed "Proper".
Taking a more helpful and personal/educational tone with new members, guiding them toward the culture of up/down/best-answer voting will likely go a lot farther toward making the site work than tweaking scoring formulas will. Guiding those whose comments or answers are less charitable, and setting a consistent example, would do, as well.

My 2 cents worth: If more users could vote, would they engage more? Testing 1 reputation voting on some sites
What SE should do, is just turn the "feature" on and see if anyone here notices any changes.

"Just doing it" without consultation is what caused the last several instances of backlash against SE.  I'd imagine they'd want to avoid any more.  And on a related note, I probably wouldn't go around volunteering a community for something like this without consulting them first.

@sempaiscuba - If SE uses Arduino SE as a test site, what are you going to do? Delete your account?

No.  Although I may just stop using the the site.  And I have no idea what others would do.  But that isn't the point.  You are just one member of the community.  You don't get to make those kinds of decisions.  Even the site mods don't get to do that without consulting - which is why Juraj posted the question here.

@sempaiscuba - The question was asked on meta.stackexchange.com. That is where I answered it first. The "decision" to answer the question is mine alone to make, not a group decision. I do not need anyone's permission to comment on SE meta sites. Please read: https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta If you really want your voice heard, then this is the place: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/393127/if-more-users-could-vote-would-they-engage-more-testing-1-reputation-voting-on/393141#393141

I can see where it was asked, and I know what Meta is (I've used it in the past, and I'm pretty sure it shows up on my profile).  That question asks for sites to volunteer, and you said "Arduino SE would be a great place to test this out".  That's effectively volunteering this community for the trial.  The phrase "In my opinion" exists for a reason, and prefixing your answer with that would have made it clear that you were expressing your personal opinion, and not a community consensus.

@sempaiscuba - I never "volunteered" Arduino SE. 1. Your comment "That's effectively volunteering..." is not true. If you feel strongly about it, why not answer / comment on the SE meta question? 2. The phrase "In my opinion" is implied. Isn't that what all answers on SE are; users individual opinions? Once again, "I do not need anyone's permission to comment on SE meta sites.".

As with essentially everyone in the network that has commented on this issue, I strongly think that it's a very bad idea to lower the reputation thresholds for voting. It seems that Arduino.SE is the only site considering this, and that the score for the answer suggesting support for doing this on Arduino.SE  is the 26th highest out of all answers which suggests that it's not really supported by the rest of the network's community.
If Arduino.SE does decide to go ahead with this experiment, I strongly, strongly suggest only the first experiment is done:

"Reputation required to cast upvotes is changing from 15 to 1"

The other two experiments:

"Reputation required to cast downvotes is changing from 125 to 1
The 1 reputation cost to downvote answers will be removed"

are in my opinion a very, very bad idea. If this community really wants to carry out the second and third experiments, I would recommend to first see how things go with the first experiment.


text:
What can we do with questions 'bumped' by Community bot?
The home page of Arduino SE and the Active tab of the Questions page have old questions modified by the Community bot. The bot periodically bumps some old questions to our attention.
How can we resolve those bumped questions to prevent the bot to bump them again and again?

We should read, evaluate and handle those bumped Q&A pairs. The criteria for bumping by the bot are criteria for Q&A pairs ignored by community members in the past. So look at the question and answers the same way you read and evaluate new questions and answers.
The Community bot bumps Q&A pairs where the answer has score 0. In case of multiple answers, the highest scored answer has score 0. Excluded are Q&A pairs with accepted answer, closed questions and questions with negative score.
So what can we do to remove these Q&A pairs from this 'ignored zone' so they are not bumped over and over?
If a positive score of the question is not deserved, downvote the question. Sometimes bad questions have a random upvote. And if the question is incomplete or off topic, vote/flag it to close as usual.
If the question is OK, then it deserves a good answer. If there is one, upvote it. If the answer is not good, downvote it. If you can write a good answer, please write it. And if the existing answer with score 0 is 'not an answer' which got under our radar, flag it.

I agree with Juraj here. Often these bumped questions actually have a reasonable answer,  but no-one has voted for the answer. Voting for the answer(s) can help.

The asking persons could need a bit more motivation to accept answeres as well. The style of asking (so many low-quality questions here on arduino) sometimes shows they have not yet grasped how SE is intended to work :(

"The Community bot bumps Q&A pairs where the answer has score 0." Even if it has an accepted answer? Why did the bot bring back this one? https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/78552/wiring-up-an-esp-01-to-nano   Even if all of those upvotes were made since it was brought back, it already had an accepted answer.

@JRobert, it wasn't bumped. it was edited 2 days ago. you can see the history with the 'time back' icon below the vote buttons

I see - thank you.


text:
Please delay your close vote on salvagable new questions
We, moderators of Arduino SE, noted that recently not suitable questions are closed really fast. While for many questions this is rightful, for some salvageable questions this happens before OP can react to first comments.
We would like to ask you to delay your close vote on new questions which lack some details or clarity but are likely to be edited by OP with the requested details.
While it is true that OP can ask to reopen after they added the requested information to the question, it can take time until the question is reopened and somebody can write an answer.
If is not a problem if at the end OP doesn't add the requested details. After some time the clean-up process will remove the question if it stays without answer. Additionally to the automatic cleanup process I return to questions with zero score after 10/30 days and I handle them.


text:
Arduino SE reviewers, new close reason proposal needs your opinion
Before adding a new close reason, it must be consulted with the community. The new close reason would be "Not reproducible or was caused by a typo". It was already discussed 6 years ago but there was no closure and I think I can't add the new close reason based on the old voting.
EDIT: Now questions which could use this close reason are closed with other reasons so this new close reason gives better explanation for the question poster.
Please vote on this post for this new close reason. You can share your thoughts about it in comments or as answer.
Stack Overflow has this close reason and I would use their texts:
Input Title

Not reproducible or was caused by a typo

Input Guidance

While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a way less likely to help future readers.

It looks like this in close reason selection:

Post Owner Guidance

This question was caused by a typo or a problem that can no longer be reproduced. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a way less likely to help future readers.

Privileged User Guidance

This question was caused by a typo or a problem that can no longer be reproduced. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was resolved in a way less likely to help future readers.

Concensus Description

Closed. This question is not reproducible or was caused by typos. It is not currently accepting answers.

This post notice looks like this:

EDIT: This close reason and its wording was fine tuned by SO Meta members in collaboration with moderators and CMs.

Would it not be better for someone to create an answer showing the OP what/where the typo is, rather than just closing the question (with potentially no explaination)? It is a good and valid way of getting upvotes in the community.

Admittedly, it would not necessarily be helpful for others searching for answers. It would increase the hay to needle ratio.

@sa_leinad, https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2667/trivial-questions-must-be-off-topic

I just closed one that could have been closed as this. However it's no hardship to just do a custom close with your own message. Do we really need a other close reason?

that is the question. some months ago somebody mentioned it in a comment on a just closed question. now exploring the mod tools I found out mods can add community close reasons but have to consult on Meta with the community. While writing the Meta post, Meta suggested the old question about the same close reason. And there are 8 upvotes and no downvote.

a prepared close reason can be tracked in stats

I was uncertain about this, however I must admit that this question is a good case in point. The problem was confusing = with == in code. This is not so much a typo as a misunderstanding of the C++ language, however if the question were to remain it would just be solving one person's coding problem, without really contributing to the general Arduino knowledge-base.
However I do have a problem with this:

This question was caused by a typo or a problem that can no longer be reproduced.

Surely they are widely different things? A typo is just a typing error, for example misspelling a word, using capitals in the wrong way, and so on.
A problem that can no longer reproduced is a totally different beast. You might try the posted code out and not reproduce the results the poster claimed. Surely this is something else? Maybe your environment, or hardware, was different?
Even the question I quoted above wasn't really a typo (unless you accidentally typed = instead of ==) but more likely to be a confusion about how C++ works compared to, say, SQL.
How about three close reasons? :)

A typo (eg. mistyping float as flat).
A lack of understanding of C++, which would apply whether or not you were using the Arduino (eg. using = for an equality test)
A problem that cannot be reproduced. (eg. a = 2 + 2 giving 5, when everyone else gets 4).

this SO Meta describes the "not reproducible" as I understand it: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/289151/how-much-longer-can-one-reproduce In this sense the reason is right in both parts for the linked question.

The close reason and its wording was fine tuned by SO Meta members in collaboration with moderators and CMs so I would prefer to leave it as it is. What maybe could be added is a "basic wiring error" for ground not connected or data lines swapped.

I liked: "Not reproducible, or trivial."

I found a comment about "trivial" in the Meta post I linked: "I'd really hate having "trivial" as one of the close reasons. There are so many things that seem trivial to some people..."

I read a “mental typo” counts as a typo too. It was for a question answered with a comment "why would your program print the output you want if you don't issue any printing commands"

"How about three close reasons?" SE sites generally only get 3 off-topic close reasons (some sites may request an additional slot to 4, currently only Stack Overflow has 5). Splitting this into 3 may prevent adding new off-topic close reasons in the future, or at least make it more difficult to adjust.

I would vote for introducing this new closing reason.
While the first sentence in the descriptions (with the "not reproducible" and "typo") leaves a bit open what exactly is meant, the second sentence ("less likely to help future readers") is the important part in most cases. I don't want to advocate against the first sentence though. We need to have a single sentence description part, which can be used as title. Such a short sentence will always leave something open.
Also: From my experience (might be different when looked at from the real numbers) the close votes are mostly done by the more experienced users on this site, which will not be confused by the option. And question writers will get a more fitting close reason. Currently we often only use "off topic" and then write a comment that C/C++ syntax is off topic. These comments might still be necessary to give more details, but more information for the user is better. And it comes with rather little cost.

thank you chrisl. the description avoids the word 'trivial' so it gives two of the most common causes for a trivial question. this is how they fine tuned it on SO and having the exact same wording as SO makes it consistent on network


text:
10th Anniversary of Arduino SE!
In February Arduino SE turned 10 years old. Congratulations on asking, answering, voting, and building this community for a whole decade!
Whenever a Stack Exchange site turns 10 we like to celebrate by encouraging users to reflect on their experiences here.
How did you first discover the site? Do you have a favorite question or answer that helped you solve a problem? Any funny anecdotes or other insights on your time here, that you would like to share? We want to hear it all!


text:
Arduino IDE boards master list
I'm compiling a "master list" of board packages for the Arduino IDE.
At the moment I have:

Adafruit

https://adafruit.github.io/arduino-board-index/package_adafruit_index.json

BBC Microbit etc

https://sandeepmistry.github.io/arduino-nRF5/package_nRF5_boards_index.json

chipKIT

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chipKIT32/chipKIT-core/master/package_chipkit_index.json

Digistump

http://digistump.com/package_digistump_index.json

ESP32

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/gh-pages/package_esp32_index.json

ESP8266

https://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json

Little Green LGT8fx

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dbuezas/lgt8fx/master/package_lgt8fx_index.json

Maixduino

http://dl.sipeed.com/MAIX/Maixduino/package_Maixduino_k210_index.json

Open Panzer TCB

https://openpanzerproject.github.io/OpenPanzerBoards/package_openpanzer_index.json

Seeeduino

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Seeed-Studio/Seeed_Platform/master/package_seeeduino_boards_index.json

Sparkfun Boards

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sparkfun/Arduino_Boards/master/IDE_Board_Manager/package_sparkfun_index.json

STM32Duino

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stm32duino/BoardManagerFiles/master/STM32/package_stm_index.json

If anyone knows of any more (the more obscure the better, even if it's just for one single board) please let me know in answers / comments.

https://github.com/per1234/ino-hardware-package-list

@Juraj Oooh, nice find. Thanks for that one.

Of course it will take some work going through all those looking for the links to the board installation JSON file where available. Many are grouped into a single file, like the Adafruit ones...

I did know about this list. Per is very active in Arduino community mainly on Arduino forum and recently he even started to work for Arduino. He writes documentation (CLI afalk). But he avoids Arduino SE for some reason.

Well, it's a great resource. Basically I'm looking to (eventually) migrate UECIDE to using (at least sometimes) arduino-cli as the compilation back-end, and want to have a way of selecting the boards / cores without you having to go hunting for them.

the CLI has boards manager services too. and it can run as RPC server (daemon)

Yes. But you still need to know the JSON file URLs. That's what I want to avoid.

the json links, right. there is no index of then anywhere. they are always mentioned in readme only

@Juraj Yeah. That file you link to has many of them, but not all. And some are b0rken too.

Is this one? For Sanguino: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lauszus/Sanguino/master/package_lauszus_sanguino_index.json. I think that's for a 3D Printing board, I think, can't remember, I may have some others.


text:
Old questions appear in "active" question list
I sometimes get questions in my "active" question list that obviously aren't active. From what I can see with my reputation level those questions haven't been edited, answered nor are there any new comments. In the question list they are tagged like they were only few minutes old, but when I open them, all date tags are outdated.
Why do they appear in my question list?
Latest examples (part of top 20 in my list):

Safely enabling voltage divider on a 12V battery
help compiling code for flora project
Sending servo position data from one Arduino to another

I agree with VE7JRO - the bot "Community" does this stuff. It is a bit annoying because you see a list of old questions for no obvious reason. Community is trying to either get an answer, or get someone to upvote an existing answer. Questions with no answers, or no answer with upvotes are considered by the bot to be open, and it is trying to jog us to do something about them.
The take-out for users in general is:

Answer questions in an answer, not just a comment. See here.
Up-vote answers to indicate you agree with them (when appropriate) - don't just nod your head without reaching for your mouse.
If you asked the question, "accept" the best answer. Don't just silently accept the help without feeding back into the system that the answer worked.
If no answers seem to be particularly good, answer it yourself.
If it's an old question (and the OP probably has forgotten about it by now) then vote to close it.

If it's a question that you know has been asked elsewhere and got an answer vote to close as dupe

Regarding the first question "12V battery...", Gerben edited his answer, so the question became "active" again.
The second question was modified by "Community". Community is a automated process that goes through old questions with no accepted answers and makes them active so they show up on the Arduino SE "home page".
If you find an answer in one of these "reactivated" questions that solves the problem, please consider accepting it. This should stop Community from making it active again.
Keep in mind that it's OK to answer your own question and accept it as the solution.