text:
Why there's so many down votes in question list?
I know people questions are not clear, demanding etc etc...
It's the first question for most of them and they might even don't know how to use the stackexchange and just seeking help! i think stackexchange code of conduct is not really followed by some in Arduino stackexchange...
Is it because people want to get that "badge" related to down votes and just looking for something that is a bit wrong to press that down button?

Critic is the only badge related to downvotes and is awarded just once per user for the First down vote. It's been awarded 379 times on this stack. So it really does not explain downvoting... but downvotes do serve a function as Majenko's answer outlines. Whether this goal is achieved best by downvotes or something else has been discussed for year. Half of Stackexchange's meta is full of it...

No, it's usually because those questions really are generally terrible. A step away from being closed, and two away from being deleted as gibberish.
Down-voting is a way of saying "This question is terrible. It needs work." but it's not so bad that it's worthy of closing as "unclear what you are asking".
Whether someone knows how to "use" Stack Exchange or not is no reason to ask questions like "I did this but it don't[sic] work. Here's my code". Wherever you ask a question it is surely just common courtesy to explain your problem clearly and succinctly. Here is no different to any other forum in that respect.
It may be possible, if you take the time and effort, to reformat the invariably "dumped on us" code and work out what his problem is (often the code is just gibberish), but most people just go "Nah, stuff you" and down-vote it as a bad question.
Another situation is where you have the same user asking basically the same question in different ways, where an answer has been given earlier and the new question is a slight modification of the original one as a kind of answer to the answer. Not strictly a duplicate, but still should really have been done as an edit to the first question.
Note that you can't go below 1 reputation - so down-votes to a new user really have no effect on the user. They only serve as an indication to those passing by that the question is probably not worth wasting your time reading.

yes they can't go below 1 rep but the down vote with comments like: "where's your code?" or "what's not working?" just gonna disappoint them. i think as you said: "most people just go "Nah, stuff you" and down-vote it as a bad question." is what actually happens to those questions.

Another reason for downvotes is the common "Here is my code [link]" making people click through to another site to see the code (or images, or whatever). They can't be bothered to even include the code (even badly formatted) in the question. Downvote.

my point is; it's better to guide them to " post your code. use code tags" or "explain the problem clearly" etc and if the OP didn't do any of that then give the OP an down vote...

Like newbie, I too feel that there is an undercurrent of negative voting. I've seen questions that I felt were reasonable - it could be argued that they were not great - but they weren't terrible - and yet they attracted negative votes. I've even seen an answer which seemed reasonable that had attracted 2 down votes (with no comments explaining why). Someone eventually posted a comment saying that a possible reason for the down votes was that they did not start their sentences with "capital letters". IMHO, there are some who may have forgotten what it is like to be starting from zero knowledge

Stack Exchange is aware that it can be unfriendly to newbies, and indeed as I write this there is a message directly above where I am typing:

newbie is a new contributor. Be nice, and check out our Code of Conduct

I know very well that when you have a problem you want a quick solution and you don't really want to muck around reading about how to format your question, blah blah, you just want an answer.
However there are quite a few people here who are basically here just to help. Just as an example Edgar Bonet has asked one question but answered 745 at the time I write this. There are lots of other users like him, who look at the site every day and try hard to be helpful.
So sit back for a moment and imagine what it is like to try hard every day to help people with their Arduinos, and then see questions which are so poorly written it is almost impossible to help. I don't mean dumb questions (there aren't dumb questions) but just insultingly badly written questions. For example:

There is no obvious question, or even a question at all. Perhaps just a dump of an error message followed by the word "help!". Or, worse, just the comment that they "got an error" and "how do I fix it?".
The code is unreadable because the poster hasn't taken the time to find how to format it (ie. selecting it and pressing Ctrl+K). Not only that but after making their post, and seeing it look like gibberish on the screen, they don't make an effort to find out what is wrong, when something obviously is.
We are told there is an error but the error isn't actually quoted. As you know, compilers generate lots of error messages, so just being told "I got an error" is virtually a useless thing to say.

I've done a Meta post about How to ask a good question and I sort-of hope that newbies will read it. However judging by the sort of questions asked, I doubt that many do.
So, at the end, our regular users (the people who answer questions) can sometimes get a little terse when confronted with a question that seems to show that the poster hasn't really tried very hard to help him or herself to start with (such as searching for the solution before asking).

Is it because people want to get that "badge" related to down votes and just looking for something that is a bit wrong to press that down button?

No, I don't think people are motivated to get that badge. As Ghanima pointed out, the badge you are thinking of is "Critic". You only get that once, and I suppose the point of it is to encourage you to down-vote bad questions. I mean, if you don't tell someone that they have done something wrong (hopefully politely) then they will continue to do that wrong thing, won't they?

Your question is a good one -- it can be frustrating to be down-voted, but it also can be frustrating to see a really badly formatted and incomprehensible question. It would be great if everyone followed the Code of Conduct and also if people asking questions read How to ask a good question.

not just frustrating to newbies... I just had a question unceremoniously closed without voting by a moderator for being unclear.  I've been around SO since before beta, and am in the top 0.06% of users, and I still dislike feeling like a victim of what I perceive to be incorrect, heavy-handed moderation.

"Do you sleep yet?" is indeed a dump question ;)


text:
Moderator abuses, a case study. Why to introduce the "power of recall" on SE network
Final note: The meta.meta.se new question has been deleted again while in the works by user animuson. Enough.

Your question was closed because you're rambling on about a process
  that already exists just not in the exact form you desire, and your
  reasoning for wanting it are based on a false premise that you'd done
  absolutely nothing to try and resolve the correct way. We're not
  having another discussion about this where you don't listen to anyone.
  It's very clear from your behavior that you just want to ramble and
  ignore everyone's feedback. You did it for many hours yesterday.

I wrote yesterday about the existing procedure, you can find it searching for "Update2" on this page.

Update2: some user noted in the comments that a recall procedure
  already exists. But 1) The procedure can be initiated by moderators
  and the company team only, the victims are excluded from the chance to
  initiate the trial, 2) there's no jury for decision making, again: the
  potential victims are excluded from the trial, 3) there's no guarantee
  that the trial will be properly anonymized and then published (the
  minutes could be published IF undefined needs arise). 4) there's no
  accessible archive of previous judgments. In general: someone could
  even question the existance of this procedure, because there's no way
  for the community to access it before, during, or after.

As animuson is a Senior Product Support Specialist at Stack Overflow... well, alea jacta est. I think is fair to say that StackOverflow took a definitive decision. And would be pure unsolicited bothering to insist. Not in my veins.
There's no point to contribute to SE if the judicial part is badly lacking minimum quality standards. And bad enough this is a common problem on all those modern platforms where a relatively small team of people must take care of a huge user base. They always tend to walk the shortcut, cutting down individual rights to save on time/costs. Then beautifying the democracity of the electron they are consuming. Time passes, some things didn't change (yet). But nowadays plenty people collected enough experience about reputation-based systems; thanks to the past bad happenings on similar platforms (example: Dave Jones' bitter Discovery ). The more bad stories, the more people awakes. Hopefully anytime soon there will be enough critical mass (of disgusted users with good ideas in mind) to force those companies to adopt what we once called "digital rights": privacy already got a step forward recently thanks to Edward Snowden. Freedom of Speech has been helped by the adoption of modern COW filesystems and flex information architectures, in the way censorship is shallow (ie: you don't see my messages any more, but there's good chance they still exist on multiple disks). And Bitcoin haven't been strangled in its baby cot like have been for DigiCash 20 years before. So, after all, things are going better. Despite small accidents like this one.
From now on, I won't be following the comments unless some good news from StackOverflow management. Please write new answers only, in the case a well grounded procedure for moderators removal has been established.
So I adapt myself: good luck on SE, bye bye, and thank you for all the (past and future) fish.

(I've been deleted AGAIN, on the way to split the issues. The following is what was in place.)
Author's note: After 2 days of discussions on 2 different topics, I'm re-editing the whole question(s) in order to make easier to partecipate. Thanks to all that helped pointing out existing procedures and resources.
Here you find the aruino.meta.se issue (alleged moderator abuse). On meta.meta.se you'll find the proposed general solution.
If you don't feel like being serious at the moment, just get some pop-corns and enjoy a quick and dirty representation of the following story: "The Orville - Season 1, Episode 7, Majority Rule"
(Fair) STORYLINE
(please, report in comments if some detail is not fairly reported in this storyline; I linked all I could and survived the censorship, in order for anyone to be able to freely and indipendently shape his own idea)

I posted a question about the CH340 chips found on some arduino clones. The question has been put on hold first for being off-topic, deleted right after the second comment from me, asking for claryfication and quoting the on-topic list page stating the whole board and clones being in scope of arduino.se.
I asked myself wheter was worth or not to keep spending time helping others on this reputation-based social Q&A platform, because wrong judiciary officials can destroy your long lasting efforts in a second. I've been reading solutions on SE for a decade: do I really need to give back some of the goodies I got or it is better for me to keep leeching in silence and go back to the dear old RFC1855-based forum/ml/ng? Let's think positive, and try to solve the judiciary issue before going back to work: I owe to SE community, after all. So I opened a second question on the general meta.se portal  in order to ask for a well-known procedure that could mitigate this risk. Given the higher abstraction level, the meta.meta.se looked the best context to post it. Right? Wrong. The second question has been first put on hold at first (voted off because "question's topic is only applicable to one specific site in the Stack Exchange Network."), deleted right after. So I moved the question back to arduino.meta as required by the meta.meta.se users/admins.
In the while time I privately contacted the community team but I got 2 messages from a bot and 1 from an ostrich (or an italian mafia guy: "Noooothing I'vve seeeeen, capisc'?", can't really tell what was on the other side). Then nothing more... anyway, I hope you're laughing. Cause this wall of text is huuuuuge and we need to relax sometimes. Back to work: at this point of time I want to think that the ostrich sent a signal to the Almighty Community Team, and the Benevolent Community Team had a chat with the moderator that had closed my arduino.se question. Sweet dreams are melodies...
The moderator attempted an answer here on this arduino.meta.se question, missing the whole point like many other users did: the point is not "why" he put on hold my original question, but the act of deleting the question instead of make it clear why he put that on hold; we are 1 step ahead now. We are at demanding the "power of recall", not let me post my question. Anyway: his off-topic, and rationale-less typing has been recorded, and his effort/time appreciated. It should be appreciated, at least: many commenters on meta.meta.se insisted that by not having the original question, they couldn't judge the situation because the other side of the story was missing. That's why judicials can't be taken at large: judging at large easily becomes lynching. Anyway, now we have the other side of the story; long story short: when I posted the second comment insisting on comparing the on-topic list with my case, he decided it was not worth discussing with me, and deleted the question just for fun. Basically he doesn't want to accept arduino.se rules (on-topic list and code of conduct) and instead of talking to other moderators and community managers in order to change the rules he doesn't like, he first harass the users and then delete their questions in order to not be questioned. Because whoever discuss his moderation "is just one of those many whiners like you, he met in his long time here in SE" (rephrased to shorten). Honestly yesterday I granted him the benefit of the doubt. Now his intention is declared instead. I know many politicians, some cops, and all the judges I know, having the same attitude. And criminals as well: "Your Hoooonor! Please, let's forget about the past and be friend all togheter!". That's why long time ago the Magna Charta was bloodily requested and unwillingly signed...
The best thing to do would be to undelete both the previous questions, and edit those; in order to not loose the history; but I don't have the privilege, the ostrich is busy, and the moderator would like to be an ostrich. So, in order to avoid the same confusion many users did yesterday, I've split the two issues in two separate questions, as reccomended by some users/admins in the 2-days, multiple-threads, discussion: I leave here on arduino.meta.se the meta-discussion on the deleted arduino question, and open a new meta-question on meta.meta.se strictly tailored on the more general topic of the "power of recall" procedure that could benefit the entire SE network.

Given the previous events:
- can my question be undeleted so I can slightly update instead of opening a new one working around the previous issue?
- because this single issue isn't that important after all, can we now (after the moderator expressed his side of the story) focus on the real topic (the need of a "power of recall") so that these obnoxious abuses and the following excruciating discussions can be reduced making SE a bit better than already is now?
Thank you.

WORK IN PROGRESS. STUFF TO BE MOVED BACK TO meta.meta.se
(Original question posted on meta.meta.se, I couldn't move it back there)
I've just been the victim of a wrong moderation decision. Before going to the point, I try to summarize my case because it is the perfect case study for requesting the introduction of the "power of recall" in Stack Exchange. Long story (short, if you read bold words only):

Arduino Stack Exchange, I post my first question (note: the question is deleted, the link can't be accessed) about how to program a variant of the companion chip that comes on some arduino boards. The original arduinos come with an USB-serial converter from the company FTDI, arduino clones instead come with any cheaper chip can do the job (usually CH340). I swapped the onboard CH340C chip with a CH340B variant, making it a different arduino clone. The change I made is exactly the same change between an original Arduino NanoV3 (with FTDI chip) and my unbranded NanoV3 clone (with CH340C chip). Actually, by swapping the "C" variant with the "B" variant I basically re-added a functionality that the original board have and the clone (with "C" variant chip) doesn't. I called mine Frankenuino NanoV3, clone (with CH340B chip). Nothing fancy has been added or removed from the clone board.
after a couple of minutes moderator Majenko put the question on hold for being off-topic. So I went to check the on-topic page because, being a new user, I had the doubt to really be off-topic and wanted a better understanding of my wrongdoing. But I've found to be perfectly on-topic: "On topic: Specific questions about Arduino boards, ..., clones/counterfeits/derivatives" (quoted from the on-topic page just linked). Note that the arduino stack exchange covers the whole board (ie: not the main chip only) AND the clones (ie: not the original arduino only). So I couldn't follow the first part of the guideline on the closed question page: "Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope.", because the question was already well inside the scope. But I could follow the second part about asking in the comments to the moderator why the question had been closed

@Majenko Why did you tag this question as off-topic? "On topic:
  Specific questions about Arduino boards, ...,
  clones/counterfeits/derivatives" (
  arduino.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic ). The USB-serial converter is
  part of the board and strictly needed to access that kind of board.

and he had replied

No, the Arduino software and the MCU on the board are on topic. What
  makes you think we would know anything about custom programming of a
  proprietary chip that is not used on any official Arduino boards? If
  there is no tool in apt or on github then you're probably stuffed.

This is evidence that the moderator didn't read/understand the on-topic page (where it is clearly stated "board" instead of "the MCU only", and "clones" instead of "official Arduino boards"), or is involved in some kind of copyright/patents devoted religion, or simply doesn't pay attention when reading. In any case, the moderator doesn't fit the role.
So I insisted:

@Majenko did you read the on-topic definition page before closing
  questions like this? I quoted the page in the previous comment. 1) It
  says "board" not "AVR MCU", 2) It explicitly says
  "clones/counterfeits/derivatives". In other words you are not allowed
  to close this question. Please vote for re-open.

And he simply... deleted the question.
As a result:

By closing the question he denied me the chance to partecipate to Stack Exchange.
By not accepting discussion, he denied Stack Exchange (ie: us all) the chance to have better moderation by having moderators that know the common rules we all have.
By deleting the question I've lost the time I've spent to produce it. Because I've lost access to it: I can't discuss further, I can't link it to another context, and as soon as I close the browser page I'll loose that text for ever.

It's a sluggish form of censorship very common nowadays in many different contexts, and always unacceptable.
Now, because Stack Overflow is run by me (together with you all) by public elections and increasing the hierarchy depth (user->moderator->super moderator->mega super moderator->and so on...) is an endless game that increase costs, never solve 100% of the issues forcing the introduction of more depth in the hierarchy in order to refine the selection process for moderators, I'd like to see the introduction of "power of recall" in Stack Exchange in a similar way it has been done in the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 2015: "proceedings are initiated only if an MP is found guilty of a wrongdoing that fulfils certain criteria".
So there's the need to define such criteria to define "wrongdoing". The first criteria that should be taken into consideration is the one I violated here: privacy, the name of the misbehaving moderator, OR his wrongdoing, shouldn't be known. Because the goal is not to lynch someone; the goal is to improve the community. But it is not our case study.
The second criteria that should be took into consideration in all reputation-based information systems is about the Freedom of Speech: "if, after a mistake, the moderator enact another privileged action in order to conceal the previous mistaken privileged action, and by doing so denying himself a chance to learn and preventing any chance of further investigation by the community for the community". And this is our case study: by deleting the question, the damage increased, instead of giving us the chance to understand what's on-topic and what's off-topic.
That's just a draft. And there might be further criteria that can automatically trigger a recall procedure. The point I'm trying to do is that there must be a way to get rid of people unfit for the role, in the same way there is one to elect them in that role. So, if you are willing to keep going with moderators election, you must introduce a way to make those moderators think twice and more in general to make them a better moderation class.
Because the general public can't be expert of a single topic (in our case "arduino"), there must be a procedure to vote the moderator off, accessible by all the users (over 100 reputation?) of that portal only. In our case study is pretty simple as the on-topic page clearly states what's on-topic, but in some cases there could be the need of more peculiar knowledge. And the users of a single stack exchange portal are the only one supposed to understand the issue.
1) Feature request: Who do I have to write this note to? Any advices? Toughts?
2) Solving my issue on arduino portal: I'll try to re-post exactly the same question. But I guess it will be censored again. This is what the "unfit administrators" usually do. Is there any other existing procedure I didn't find in my investigations?
Update1: this is not a duplicate of question n.28867. That question is asking what options exist already. I'm asking if a particular procedure can be implemented in the (near?) future. Moreover, my concerns are not only about my single case - as I can ask questions in other contexts (ex: arduino forum) - it's about making stackexchange better, and in particular prevent moderator abuses. Low quality moderators bring to users leaving stackexchange in search of better options.
Update2: some user noted in the comments that a recall procedure already exists. But 1) The procedure can be initiated by moderators and the company team only, the victims are excluded from the chance to initiate the trial, 2) there's no jury for decision making, again: the potential victims are excluded from the trial, 3) there's no guarantee that the trial will be properly anonymized and then published (the minutes could be published IF undefined needs arise). 4) there's no accessible archive of previous judgments. In general: someone could even question the existance of this procedure, because there's no way for the community to access it before, during, or after.
Update3: some users noted in the comment that the question is off-topic, and it isn't:
If your question is about:

- Stack Exchange
...
- Support, feature requests, or bug reports for the core Stack Exchange engine that powers all Stack Exchange websites

… it is welcome here.

( https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic )

Update4: it looks like many commenters aren't reading the title, or can't understand the issue. From the comments: "you keep saying that a moderator is unqualified for deleting one of your questions". This is spam: I challenge anyone finding me asking even once to remove the delete privilege from moderator's role. Please avoid commenting without reading, or driven by reasons different from contributing to the solution of the issue in question.

Related: Toxic moderation harms the community

I note that your post on Meta Stack Exchange has been put on hold. Rather ironic, as you are complaining about posts being closed and now your complaint is put on hold. The reasons given are that the complaint is (they say) specific to this site, however I'm inclined to agree that complaints about moderators in general are not specific to this site.

@NickGammon I feel like Lt. John LaMarr in the 7th episode of The Orville ( https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule ): landed on a planet called Sargas4, filmed while dancing with a statue for fun, bound to the electric chair watching the reputation counters going up/down and shitting my pants because the 10 million negative vote triggers the electric chair. Eheh. Yes, rather ironic. But it was a while without some sparring with a tons of minions. It's fun, after all.

@NickGammon I got Reputelectrocuted! I'll have to do the Apologies Tour!

@NickGammon, I found the Question. I don't understand why Majenko deleted it. It could be by mistake? https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/68446/usb-to-serial-chip-ch340b-internal-eeprom-programming-from-linux

@Anichang - The link to the "question on the general meta.se portal", item 2. is invalid because the post was deleted (off-topic). You did manage to get -17 rep for it though. Well done.

@VE7JRO Thanks, I'll fix it when I go deleting the left overs. I'm currently editing the quesion on meta.meta.se in order to move out the stuff from here. I'll checkout everything once the split is completed. About the -17 rep: I expected to get between "N(N-1)/2" and "2^N-N-1" (N = moderators number on SE network) negative votes, so the result is well beyond my best expectations.

Can you give us a link to the question on meta.meta.se?

I can't! The old question has been deleted, the new one is still in the making. We are talking of the meta.meta.se questions, not the arduino and arduino.meta ones.

But you said you were "currently editing the question". I'm confused.

There isn't much yet. But here it is: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333127/do-we-need-power-of-recall-to-avoid-moderator-abuses

That link also gives a 404 error...

Just the time to post the draft, copy the link and switch tab to give it to you and ... it was deleted again. Unless the community team clean up their mess, there's no point to keep going. Nor to enrich SE with free content.

now I see why Majenko deleted the Question on Arduino SE

Your question was blatantly off topic.
If you buy a Dongfeng car and rip out the factory installed stereo, then buy a Fony™ stereo and fit it yourself, would you then go to a Ford dealership to ask how to tune the stereo to your favourite station?  No.  You'd get laughed all the way down the road.
You do NOT presume to dictate to us what wuestions we are and are not allowed to close.  I have met many many people like you in my time here. You live to complain (as evidenced by the fact that your "complaint" question is far more detailed than your actual question...!)
Off topic is off topic is off topic. No amount of complaining on your part will change that. The moment it became apparent that it was the start of a long, drawn out whine by you, I deleted the question. I refuse to get into arguments with moaners like you about what is and is not on topic, when what you are asking is blatantly off topic.
Be glad it was only the question I deleted.
I can guarantee that, if I hadn't closed the question, within a matter of minutes it would have been closed as "off topic" anyway by others - because it was off topic. 100% off topic.

"Queri ego cogito ergo sum"

So much text, and no reasons why it was off-topic. I ask you again: did you read the list of on-topic items for the arduino SE? I don't dictate anything: I've no provileges to enforce my words! My naked keyboard only! That page instead, passively does. Those kind of pages are called "rules", and are published in order to make clear in advance what can be done and what not. Here there are multiple pages like that, example: the code of conduct page. And you should read them all before deciding yourself alone to declare war to arduino clones, or put-down someone that complaints of you.

How can I put it more simply: The CH340B and its internal workings are not on topic. Programming said chip through its external interface is off topic. Just because you stuck it to an Arduino does not make it magically on topic for an Arduino site.  It may fit on the Electrical Engineering SE site, but it is NOT on topic here.

Dude, on arduino.se there are 2 pages of questions tagged CH340. The B/C/T/S/M... chip have the same CH340 datasheet. I've some of those Nano with the CH340B on them (that's why I bought more). I bought some Dongfeng cars and they sent me some with blue stereo LEDs and some with red stereo LEDs, so I went to a mechanic shop with a big blinking sign outside "Dongfeng car repairs HERE" asking to change the red leds into blue leds. Does it sounds good to you?

Yes, and NONE of them have anything to do with the internals of the chip and programming it. Using it as part of an Arduino and getting it to work WITH ARDUINO, fine. Using the chip itself? NO!

Anyway, your answer doesn't answer the question. The question advices a well known method for recalling elected administrators, requests for comments and wheter or not is possible to introduce something similar in SE. You are off-topic.

You see, this is exactly why I deleted the question. Whatever anyone says will be wrong. You are right, and everyone else is wrong. I refuse to argue with you - it is pointless. The question is off topic. Final answer. DO NOT ARGUE.

Dude, again: that chip (and its internals) is ON-BOARD! And the on-topic list clearly says "board" not "MCU". This SE is called "Arduino" (board), not "AVR MCUs". Please stop jumping from the branding issue to the board/mcu issue, and back. They exist in your mind only, as they both are well placed in the scope of arduino.se. Look: the FTDI chip on the original arduinos have the same features of the CH340B. And same of you FTDI made a campaign to discredit their competitors! They even developed a virus to break the CH340 chips and pushed it as driver for CH340 chips! You are doing the same...

I refuse to engage with you any more. You just won't take no for an answer. Goodbye.

"I refuse to engage with you any more." I'm glad you wrote openly. Because that's exactly the abuse of privileges that makes you an admin bad enough to need the "power of recall". To make a mistake is fine and human; I do at least one minor and one major every day. To refuse to discuss a potential mistake instead is unacceptable. To delete the traces of the mistake is the worst you could do. When you don't want to discuss any more - and in this case you have to, because you have some responsibilities; I don't, I've due diligence only; you do - you can simply stop writing. Deleting is too much

There is a way of contact the Community Managers who are the ones that manage moderators. I think the form here goes to them.
See also Handling Calls to Remove a Moderator and What recourse do I have if I believe a moderator has abused their privileges?.
I do not think you are completely powerless here. Those links outline the process for dealing with problems with moderators.

And yes, I read those questions too and updated my question accordingly. See Update1 and Update2 at the end of my question.

I would like to chip in my support for the Arduino Stack Exchange moderators (both past and present). They are volunteers who donate their time to keep this stack exchange running and spam free for all of us to enjoy. A heartfelt thank you.
@Anichang I would have voted that your question was off-topic if it was in a review queue. Granted, you were modifying an Arduino clone by replacing a chip with another (more advanced) chip, but the question you ask is how to create a Linux command line tool that lets you access the advanced features of the new chip. It wasn't really about the Arduino clone - it was about programming the advanced features of a new chip only.
If you had of asked about using the Arduino clone, programming a sketch into the Arduino clone or a problem you were experiencing using the Arduino clone that didn't happen with a standard Arduino, then it would be on topic.
A good way to test if a question is about Arduino is to remove the Arduino references from the question. If the question still makes complete sense and the references to Arduino don't add any value to the question, then it is off topic.
If you had of asked how you could identify your Arduino clones on your USB hub, then that would have been on topic.
It is very likely that in the current form your question would have been closed as off topic by the community. Like the moderators, we volunteer our time to answer people's questions about Arduino.
Instead of the long post you put up here (and on Meta.SE) because you disagreed with your post being closed, imagine the good you could have done if you had of put the same amount of effort into answering some of the Arduino questions here.

Once we have the on-topic page explicitly placing ON-TOPIC clones and derivatives. what you "feel" and what the moderator "felt" is irrelevant. Moreover, the moderator made clear that his concern is about branding, ie: it's a copyright/trademark/branding crusade - it's censorship - not a well placed reasoning making spam of my question about a derivative board. Please, as I stated, don't add more off-topic answers. I kept this question on hold until a reasonable way to remove admins by the people, for the people, has been added.

About donating time for no-profit activities: I'm not questioning the good hearted behaviours. I, myself, created my account as I felt to owe something to SE community after about 10 years of finding solutions on these pages. Check my history: I created the account to help others. My first question was after I answered a few questions, and was just a way to figure out how the system works. Unfurtunately, my final evalutation is: no worth using SE to help others, because it lacks the same features lacking on all the other modern "socials". Tried, dumped.

It is clear that you just want to argue and not take on any feedback whatsoever.

That's obvious: it's a Q/A system! And this is the meta side of it: Q about the Q/A system, ends in itself. Pure arguing. More in general, plenty functional illiterates complaint of others not listening/reading/accepting other's opinions; it's pretty common nowadays. Many go searching for "Communication for dummies" or more fancy Schopenhauer's "Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten". Instead of refine their reasoning. I can't know wheter you didn't read or you didn't understand, in any case your discussion points have all been exposed before you posted. There was no need for you to write answers.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Who is downvoting each and every question?
Four years ago I asked this: Why there's so many down votes in question list?
The problem is still there and clearly the "downvote so they understand their question is terrible" guide is not working in this sub.

Maybe we should try not to kick and push people out of this sub to other platforms like Reddit. Can we not downvote them? If the question isn't well formatted or is not clear or whatever, just leave a comment and ignore the question without downvoting it.

I agree with you. As a moderator it irritates me when many questions quickly get downvoted, rather than an attempt being made to improve the question, or to simply ask for clarifications.
People are allowed to downvote questions, and they don't have to explain themselves, so they are working within the rules.
Egregious multiple downvotes (or upvotes) can be detected and reversed, however modest amounts are hard to fix.
Maybe the downvoters are simply trying to be annoying. The best way to combat that is to just ignore them. Ignore the downvotes unless there are a lot of them. If there are a lot, perhaps consider what could be done to improve the question.

Someone down-voted both yours and my question, seems like we have troll on this site.

I stick my tongue out at the trolls! :P

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


text:
Arduino SE and cross-posts: How to do community moderation?
I flagged a cross-post for moderator attention and the flag was declined with "flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content that requires their intervention".
What would be the right way to handle it?
I acted based on this SO Meta post: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/255649/is-so-se-crosspost-accepted

In this instance I took the decision that the post was at home here and the post on the other site should be closed.
Just because a post exists on more than one site it doesn't always follow that this site should have the question closed.

ok, but does it mean that the flag is automatically declined?

No, it means I declined it.

why did you decline it?

For the reasons I stated in my answer. I felt the one on ASE should be the one to stay since it was on topic here.


text:
Are questions about widgets used with an Arduino on-topic?
This topic has been discussed previously but not seemingly clearly resolved. (ref. Are questions that are only related to Arduino by the parts used on topic?).
Recently (early 2022) some community members have been implementing a strict policy that seems to me to have low utility, and to be somewhat harsh (ref. Looking for vibration sensor, Continuous servo motor).
I would argue that questions about using Arduino MCU's often relate to the parts selected and interfaced. That's why the community has tags to identify these topics. Some of the tag info wiki's specifically encourage such questions. (e.g., Sensors tag, "Use this tag for questions about selecting, connecting, using, and debugging sensors.") If the spirit of the question is about using the arduino ecosystem, then I think the community should start the conversation in as friendly and as tolerant a way as possible in the spirit of exploring what might be a useful question.
Currently the on-topic help says (regarding General Electronics being off-topic) that, "If knowledge of Arduino would improve a question, it's on topic.". If an OP is asking about connecting a widget to an Arduino board then while they might not know if the issues are specific to Arduino, I believe they are hoping that we as a community might. Similarly, if a widget might possibly be connected to something other than an Arduino that shouldn't automatically make it off-topic.
Is the community able to:

agree a more objective policy
if so update the help page
follow a more tolerant implementation strategy?

My suggestions regarding implementation are:

Leave a couple of days before closing doubtful questions of this type
If the question generates useful on-topic comments or answers, then it should be deemed on-topic
If there is a history of similar questions and answers being on-topic, then the question should be deemed on-topic (but may possibly be a duplicate)
That the community should focus on the OP intent more than the letter of the "on-topic" law

I've seen literally most of the question posted here downvoted or closed, which doesn't help anyone. It's probably the "problem of small authority" in an over-zealous mod, but perhaps the acceptability criteria need loosened. Or whomever is just being a jerk needs to chill a bit...

What is on topic on Arduino SE is in Help Center in What topics can I ask about here?. Some type of questions, even on-topic, is not suitable for Q&A format. There is Help Center article What types of questions should I avoid asking?.
Some questions are in the gray zone for on-topic and/or Q&A format. Then it is on community members with close vote privilege to decide about the question with close votes.
On-topicness should not be discussed in comments under the question. The right place is the Meta. If you see such a comment, flag it as "no longer needed".
On-topicness of the question about the vibration sensor linked in question, depends on the solution. I for example don't know if there is a couple of established ways to measure vibration with Arduino or the answer is generic and opinion based.
I don't see a reason to change the Help pages about scope of Arduino SE.
Your suggestions are valid but it is on the community members to implement them. As a moderator I only close questions which are clearly off topic or miss important details and could attract low quality answers (Then I follow the question to reopen after it is completed).

Keep up the great work you are doing here on Arduino SE :)


text:
Middle Sidebar Advertising
As you all know, advertising is an important source of revenue for Stack Overflow and it helps us support all the sites across the Stack Exchange Network and the resources that go into maintaining and improving the experience on the platform. We are going to be introducing middle sidebar ads, which have been on the main Stack Overflow site for years, to some of the tech sites including Arduino.
The middle sidebar ads have the same standards as any other ads on the platform. Ads are non-intrusive and static. Ads go through a vetting process to ensure they are appropriate for the communities on Stack Exchange. If you see an ad that may not follow our established standards and guidelines, you can let us know by using the "report this ad" functionality. Here is a mockup of what these will look like when two ads are showed (the existing ad placement and the new middle sidebar ad placement):

This ad space won’t be available for display until May 10 because we wanted to give you a heads-up before you started seeing them. Ads are an essential line of business for us and we’re committed to giving you advanced notice whenever we introduce a new form of advertising on the network sites. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.


text:
I lost 100 reputation points
I was quite busy for a few months and did not have any chance to check Arduino Stack Exchange and when I open today I have lost near about 120 points I don't know why and there is a message Serial Voting corrected. Is there any chance I can get back my lost reputation? Or do I need to earn them again?

Hey - yeah, Majenko's answer here is correct. It's seriously unfortunate, but was a necessary voting correction that affected a good number of users. If you or anyone else has questions about it, I'm happy to help answer them. Just poke me in the comments here.

No, thank you @Slate. It is now clear to me if I have any further doubts I will surely let you know. Thank you

I'm late to this question on meta, but I just realized, that I lost a whole 3600 in reputation. I was wondering but this answers it. Must have been a really bad rogue user to give me 3600 points.

Don't worry, you're not alone. We had a rogue user that caused some trouble, and their bad behaviour has been corrected. Those 120 points you had are gone I'm afraid. But don't worry, some people lost thousands of rep.
Keep writing great answers and I'm sure you'll soon enough earn them back.


text:
Can we change the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3?
This SO Meta 'question' announces lowering of the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3 on Stack Overflow.
The answer to a question in a comment if it applies to other SE sites is this link, but it doesn't really have the answer.
Do our moderators have more informations? Can we have a threshold of 3 votes?

There are a lot of 1st time posters who may take getting their question closed the wrong way and just leave for good.  I would be in favor of reducing the number of votes but only if the votes were accompanied by a (good) posted comment against the question voted to be closed.  If possible, I would even favor weighting the close votes.  Close votes with no attached comment = 1/5 votes needed to close.  Close votes with an attached comment = 1/3 votes needed to close.

@st2000, Stack Exchange changed the 'notices' about closing reason https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/12/05/new-post-notices-improving-feedback-on-stack-overflow-questions/

@st2000, there are never 5 close votes here on Arduino SE. usually moderator must help to close the garbage questions

I like the improvements in the linked-to stackoverflow blog.  I did not see where it addresses situations where people vote to close questions with no feed back to the original poster.  While I don't think it is fair to demand feed back, I do think rewarding it is fair game.

@st2000 - Every "On Hold" and "Closed" post always gave "feed back to the original poster". The wording of the reasons for on hold / closure has recently changed, and the background color changed from yellow to blue https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/12/05/new-post-notices-improving-feedback-on-stack-overflow-questions/ I believe comments are still active when a question is put on hold, and can be transferred to chat for an extended conversation. Comments / chat can be used to clarify the exact nature of the issue(s) with the question. A person voting to close can leave a comment if they choose.

@VE7JRO, when will the change happen?

@Juraj - The "test" I'm told started in January, and we should hear something after the end of the month. If we haven't heard anything by the middle of February, I will contact SO. This is a feature we really need. Most people are unaware that votes to close "age away" after 5 days. Let's say we get 4 VTC on a question, a week goes by, and voila, there are 0 VTC. This aging away of votes is OK for a busy network like EE, but for us it doesn't work very well.

@VE7JRO here are 4 close votes https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/71686/is-it-permissible-to-use-strlcpy-to-copy-an-array-to-itself

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=Close&daterange=last7days

@VE7JRO, the "Arduino uno wifi rev2 stuck inside loop." needs guidance, not solving. the OP asked more questions with the same sketch. some of them have accepted answers

the strcpy question is extremely common. the OP didn't try to google it

@VE7JRO, something new?

I think the community here is still quite small with only 177 users having 500+ reputation so they are able to cast close votes. How many questions are in the queues? Is it too much for moderators to get involved?

@ThomasWeller - I agree. And out of the 177, very few of those users "get involved". There may be 20 regular users who participate in these "maintenance" tasks. IMHO, giving the community the ability to close questions at 3 votes, rather than 5 votes, gives them more control, not less. I am in favour of this proposed change.

@ThomasWeller - There is a possibility that 3 users could join forces to abuse this new privilege (if we are approved for it). A simple flag for moderator attention by any user is all that's required to start an investigation (I sure hope users with 1 rep can flag a post). Whether 5 or 3 people voted to close a question, a single moderator vote can reopen it at any time.

@VE7JRO: I doubt it would be abused. Flagging is possible with 15 rep, which is indeed low. Unfortunately, new users won't know that this option exists and it's the right way to go. In other forums (non-SE), flagging is mostly considered as a harmful action like removing the post due to copyright violation, violence or similar.

@VE7JRO, something new?

@Juraj - Nothing new. Still waiting for SE.

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344586/our-commitment-to-responding-to-meta-and-moderators

@Juraj - I was just about to add a comment with the very same link :) On March 16th, I'll add that tag to this meta post and we'll see what happens. There have been a lot of "changes" at SE lately, so I know they have been very busy. Thanks for your patience.

@Juraj - Have a look at the "older questions" section of this document: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/345032/community-and-moderator-guidelines-for-escalating-issues-via-new-response-proces. Changing the VTC from 5 to 3 sounds like a "Community-specific concern" to me.

yes, yes, that is why I deleted the comment about new question only. we only want this one simple thing

@Juraj - I've added the status-review tag. Now we wait...

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/347959/meta-escalation-response-process-update-march-april-2020-test-results-next-ste?cb=1

@Juraj - Yup, I read that a few days ago. There is nothing more I can do until a SE employee makes this change happen.

thank you @VE7JRO, I think about it

@JNat, this would really help us

Once you are elected as a moderator (https://arduino.stackexchange.com/election), the 3 or 5 vote issue will disappear. We still need the 3 vote to close to be implemented.

@VE7JRO, we have 3 vote close. they left it active even the test was planed to end in June. https://arduino.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2681/3-vote-close-hows-it-going

Some of you may have noticed the Meta Stack Exchange post - Testing three-vote close and reopen on 13 network sites (it's linked in the featured on meta sidebar) - we've finally got this project under way and Arduino is one of the sites we'll be running the test on.
Starting tomorrow, I'll be changing the site setting and closing and reopening will require only three votes. This test will run for 45 days and will be turned back to five votes to close and reopen while I review the data from the 13 sites. After we've seen the impact, I'll be posting results and, if there aren't negative impacts, we will change the setting to three permanently.
A few weeks into this, I'll be posting a question here on meta to ask for your thoughts about this change, so you will have an opportunity to discuss the impact.
Thank you so much for your patience while we got this prioritized and scheduled. There's a lot more information in the MSE post, so please review it.

yes I noticed it. thank you. I am curios for the outcome of the test, because now we have more users with close voting privllege than year and a half back when I opened this

It's good that y'all have more people with the privilege but I based this decision on your recent activity and y'all are handling less than half the questions that are flagged for closure - now, that could be because there's no one reviewing or because people are skipping a lot because they're not sure how to handle certain questions or any number of other things, so I'm hoping to capture some of that at the mid-test feedback opportunity.

back then it was completely hopeless to close a question without moderator :-)

I have some information regarding the process of changing the "close/reopen vote threshold".

We need a question on our meta site that discusses the merits of changing the required number of close and reopen votes.
Options are 5 votes, or 3 votes, or 1 vote.
Once our users have talked it through, we can get a one-month test started.

Let's see what our users and other site moderators have to say (we are all in different timezones).
In the mean time, how about an anonymous survey for the Arduino SE users. Please up vote one of the following comments you agree with.

Update 2020-02-04.
I spoke with a SE employee about this proposed change, and ask for your patience while they work through higher priority tasks. While we are waiting, there are some things we can do as a community:

Use the "Flagging" system to bring "problem" questions to the
moderators attention. Before I was elected as a moderator, I raised
640 flags in 640 days (35 were declined). If you see something wrong,
don't be afraid to flag it.
Vote to Close the question. You don't have to use the "canned
reasons". Select "off topic" then "other" to give us a description of
why you think the question should be closed.
Down vote the question. It doesn't "cost" you any rep, and it sends a
clear message to the community about the perceived value of the
question.
If you have the rep, and feel strongly about a question, do all of
the three previous suggestions.

Update 2019-12-11. Our site has been scheduled to have the test started some time in January. I’ll update this answer as more information becomes available.
Update 2020-01-13. There are 2 comments to Juraj’s question that should be discussed.

The first comment is regarding this Q+A:
  Is it permissible to use strlcpy to copy an array to itself?.

Right now it has a score of -3, with 4 Votes To Close (VTC). The question includes a sketch that compiles, however, it’s subject matter is a basic C++ question. As a user of Arduino SE, I dis-agree with closing the Q+A. As a moderator, I was elected to work for the community, so I will give it the 5th VTC. As a user, I’m sorry to say this to the 4 people who VTC, but I’m up-voting the question to try to give the OP some rep back, and I’m up-voting Edgar’s answer because he gave a great answer as usual. Unless this question gets up to at least 100 views in 5 days, the community robot will permanently delete it from the system.

The second comment deals with other questions. One of them has 3 VTC
  and the other has 2 VTC. Regarding the 3 VTC:
  https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/71290/how-can-i-get-the-esp32-to-be-a-webserver-in-addition-to-other-things.

It has a score of -1 (I gave it the -1 before the OP make 2 edits to improve it). The last comment indicates the OP is still "working on it", so I will VTC. This question can still be edited and will show up in the Reopen Votes: https://arduino.stackexchange.com/review. Of course, any user, can leave a comment on any question, (or flag it) at any time, and say "I have an answer. Please re-open the question".

The question with 2 VTC:
  Arduino uno wifi rev2 stuck inside loop.

I can see the OP is a "New contributor" to our network, so extra patience is expected from our community. There seems to be multiple languages used here (English, German, Dutch). Arduino SE is an "English" site, however, we have a global audience with users who speak everything except English. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to teach yourself another language, just so you could ask for help on the Arduino SE network.
Some of the things I don’t like about this Q+A. There is a lot of discussion in the question’s comments. The comments should be moved to chat, which I will do. The use of the additional languages creates extra work for the community. I used Google Translate to verify that none of the comments, code comments, and language in the image were offensive (in English).
For now, I’ll add this question to my list, and watch for further VTC. If we are approved for the 3 VTC proposal, then one more VTC will close it. I won’t like it, but if that is the wishes of the community, so be it.

YES: Change the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3.

YES: Change the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 1.

NO: Do Not Change the close/reopen vote threshold. Leave it at 5.


text:
Congratulation to Majenko for reaching 100k reputation points
Congratulation to Majenko to be the first Arduino SE member reaching 100k reputation points. These points were collected on his 3,819 answers in 7 years and 5 months.

Well, that's impressive! Well done, Majenko.

Well done Majenko!!!
The whole community thanks you for your contributions over the past 7+ years. We are wiser because of your contributions.
Thank you!


text:
Custom Arduino Community design and logo - Information gathering
Congratulations, Arduino community! We’re going to be creating a custom site design for you that we hope will represent your subject and we want you all to really love it. You’ve been waiting almost 5 years and we really want to do this well. To facilitate this, we’re reaching out now to ask you for what you’d really love to see in the design and logo.
I’m Paul, one of the Product Designers here at Stack. I'll be working with our community managers in order to ensure that your custom theme reflects your community. I’m not an Arduino expert (though I did join the Makey Makey bandwagon and had a Tessel) - so I’ll be relying on you to help guide this process. Looking forward to it!
A quick history lesson about site theming
Originally, site designs were part of the site graduation process. When a site left beta, they'd get their design. But, at the time we only had one designer who was working on designs and the designs were very specialized and often involved a lot of custom illustrations. We got into a situation where several sites were in queue for graduation but the designer didn't have the bandwidth to actually create the designs.
Before she worked here, Catija asked the question Can Beta sites slated for graduation get full-site abilities without site design upgrade? - on MSE. This kicked off several discussions within the CM team of the time and community members and the eventual decision was to implement "Design-independent graduation" in September 2015. This meant that many sites were finally able to leave beta without waiting on a design - including Arduino!
At that time we also had much more strict guidelines for when a site could graduate - they had to consistently get 10 new questions per day. This level of volume made graduation impossible or very unlikely for many sites - meaning many would stay in beta forever. As such, the CM team considered another request - Let's break up with "Graduation" and remove a bunch of "Beta" labels - and that's what eventually happened, too. In 2019, we removed the beta label from 29 sites and another 59 in December 2021.
We've also gone through several design systems changes, including launching Stacks version 1.0, which make creating and building in designs much simpler for both our design team and the developers. In fact, we showed off how flexible it could be in our April Fools prank this year "Filters for Stack Overflow".
What to expect
Over the next few weeks, we'll be communicating with you about your site design, so please help us out as much as you can. While we may not be experts on the Arduino, we know that you are and that you likely have great ideas about what you want this site to look like - so share them with us! You've got a week now to pool up your thoughts in answers to this question, at which point I'll start working on this site.
I'll spend some time working on a design based on your guidance, and we'll be back when it's ready to show you what the design and logo look like. At that point, y'all will have a week to make suggestions for adjustments to the design. Our hope is that there will be little that needs adjusting but, due to the size of our backlog, we can't allow more than one phase of feedback, so any changes will need to be recommended at this point.
We'll then consider the changes proposed and make any adjustments that we feel are beneficial. Changes that are too big or are out of scope likely won't be possible, but we'll make sure to explain why we opted against making a change should that happen. Please understand that design is often a subjective thing and we may end up with community members differing in their opinions, so we'll be taking that into account when deciding. Decisions about the final design will be made by the design team and CMs with the concerns of the community taken into account.
Also, it's worth keeping in mind that the goal of these designs is to make something topical, unique, and attractive, but we'll be designing within the scope of our newer site theming. We'll be able to create a logo, background colors, and textures in addition to your logo - but please don't expect illustrations like what you may have seen on some of the older site designs.
Process
Over the next month or so, we’ll be going through a few steps to get your site design up and running. This post is the first of those steps. I’ll also be using this post to track the phases in the table below.

Step
Status

Information Gathering
complete

Design V1
complete

V1 Feedback
complete

Design adjustments (if needed)
complete

Developer cleanup and shipping of final design
complete

What we need from you
As I've mentioned already, we need some inspiration from you so that we can get started on this design and create something you'll really be proud of. So far, I was able to find a couple older discussions about logos and site designs here on Meta. Feel free to reference them if there are ideas you like already - or give us new ones! We're really looking for design ideas rather than needing you to design anything for us.
When you're answering this question, think about:

What symbols or images are important to the subject of this site?

Especially things that speak to insiders that we might not find on our own

Are there any colors that are tied to your subject?
What tone/mood/feeling would you like your theme to emit? While this is subjective, it helps to set some design guardrails. So, when answering with your thoughts, some good information to mention is where the theme might sit inside these axes:

From fun to serious
From classic to modern
From simple to complex

How could a good logo represent your subject? The Arduino logo is trademarked so we can't use it. There is the Arduino Community logo and colors. Or should we come up with something else?
What are things to avoid?

If you have any questions, let me know! We're really looking forward to hearing from you and getting your site design underway.

See this followup post for the proposed design: Site design and logo — Draft

The final design is now live! See this post for more details: New site design launched

I think we should use the Arduino Community Logo and the colors from the logo.
It is exactly the use for what the Community Logo was intended and it makes a strong association between Arduino SE and the worldwide Arduino community.

Reference site and permission: https://www.arduino.cc/en/trademark/community-logo

There is a paragraph in bold there: The Arduino Community Logo can NOT be used on products or services that are sold commercially and in no case on electronic boards (also non commercial). I'm  not sure if Arduino SE counts as an "electronic board". But if not, what is it?

Maybe they mean printed circuit boards. However forums and similar used to be known as Electronic Bulletin Boards so perhaps there is room for confusion there.

@NickGammon, the link is in the Q so I didn't repeat it

Yeah, I think they did a good job with this logo. Would be nice to use if you all like it

I interpreted the caveat on the Arduino Community Logo as that it can't be used on products or services that are paid, but that it would be ok here on SE. Is that your understanding too?

@paintedbicycle, maybe the best would be if SE Inc could ask Arduino (BCMI US LLC)

@Juraj Cool, we're going to do that. Thanks!

@paintedbicycle  I think their sentence "The customised logo can be used on ... any public platform you are using to self-organize and communicate" would reasonably be taken as giving us permission, as we are a public platform and we communicate.

Thanks for all your feedback and thoughts! I got the go-ahead from our community team to start the design using the Arduino Community logo and colors. Seems to be a bit of a consensus here

The final design is now live! See this post for more details: New site design launched

What symbols or images are important to the subject of this site?

As Juraj mentioned, the Arduino "Community" logo would be a good starting point. Then, perhaps, something related to electronics.

Are there any colors that are tied to your subject?

The colours from https://www.arduino.cc/en/trademark/community-logo (as mentioned by Juraj) would be reasonable colour to theme with.

What tone/mood/feeling would you like your theme to emit?

From fun to serious

Arduino is targeted at beginners. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino — some of their original projects showed off quirky ideas like a cat feeder based on a re-purposed CD-ROM drive, where the drawer would open, covering the food, and close to allow the cat access to it. So I would aim for fun/quirky/educational. :)

From classic to modern

Modern.

From simple to complex

Since we are aiming at beginners I would lean towards simple.

How could a good logo represent your subject? The Arduino logo is trademarked so we can't use it. There is the Arduino Community logo and colors. Or should we come up with something else?

I would lean towards the Community Logo, or maybe a stylized and simplified version of it.

What are things to avoid?

Cats. Nah, just kidding! Cats are adorable fluffy things — until they bite you! (Like mine does).
More seriously, take a look at Electronics Stack Exchange. They use some electronics logos (for example, a diode symbol with a circle around it). You would want to avoid making this site look too similar to theirs.

Other ideas

The classic thing people start off with is the Blink sketch which blinks an LED or two. So maybe LEDs or their representation could feature somewhere.

Arduinos tend to use "shields" which are basically printed circuit boards vertically plugged into the one below. Perhaps that could be used somewhere.

Thanks, paintedbicycle, for your post. We are looking forwards to the ideas you come up with!

Appreciate your thoughts! Very helpful, thanks


text:
Site design and logo — Draft
Update - revisions posted at the bottom

I'm Paul, a designer here at Stack Overflow and the designer working on the upcoming Arduino site theme for you. I reviewed your responses to my first post - and below you'll find the site design I came up with based on your ideas and input.
Your site design
From the answers and comments on the original post, I understood that you wanted a simple and modern design that also has a bit of fun. There was also agreement that using the Arduino Community logo and colors was a good starting point.
Color scheme

Logo

The Arduino community logo offers a space to customize which I used to insert the ? icon hinting at questions and answers here on Stack Exchange. The typeface is Inter, which is a feature-rich, clear typeface that is also open-source and available on GitHub. I hope you agree those qualities seem to fit the open-source nature of the Arduino project.
Page Design
I used these elements and I set them against a custom background that I hope does two things:

It hints at a breadboard (white background with small holes) used with Arduinos
It also hints at other technical SE sites, including Math and Electrical Engineering, Ubuntu, and maybe even Cryptography.

I hope it has a sort of "maker" or "DIY" or "behind-the-scenes" vibe to you.
For a bit of fun, I found this lovely little LED illustration created by Giacomo Alessandroni and released under CC licence to the community.

Following the SE custom of making the meta theme similar, but "greyscale", you can see what Arduino Meta would look like below.

We hope you enjoy this design, but if something doesn’t feel right, now is your chance to share your feedback. This window for feedback will be open for one week. We will then work to incorporate feedback as best as we can, finalize things on our end, and lastly, deliver the design to your site.

Update

The final design is now live! See this post for more details: New site design launched

I'm not personally a fan of noisy backgrounds. I'd much rather a plain, more simple, background.
The LED I find a bit silly and very much out of place.
The main logo though I have no real problems with.
Like Nick I think the meta logo looks muddy and dull. It could be brightened up a little.

Thank you - I'll dial down the background just a touch which should help your first point and your last point. I think the LED was about a bit of "fun" and "quirky". I'll try moving it to the footer. Thanks for your thoughts!

Have now posted the updated screenshots in the original post

@paintedbicycle That looks much  better to my eye. It gets my vote :)

I like the main site design. The breadboard idea is neat. I tried to make it look more breadboard-like by making a gap every 5 rows (like a real breadboard, there are gaps), however that made it look fussy so I think I prefer your original.
As for Meta, having the logo grey makes it look a bit "dirty" to me. Could we have the logo still coloured but the words "Arduino Meta" in grey? I mean, the grey seems to blend into the background too much, making it looks a bit of a mess.
Or maybe, like Electronics SE, make the logo lighter grey to make it stand out? I'm not sure. Maybe use the coloured logo but desaturate it, but not totally.

Having said the above, I like the design, yes. And even unchanged it is great! Thanks, Paul.

Thank you Nick. And yes I can absolutely take a look at tweaking the Meta logo and report back

I updated the logo and background to hopefully take care of your concerns. Posted the tweaks at the bottom of the original post

@paintedbicycle Looks great!

I like the idea of using breadboard pattern as background, but to be recognized as breadboard it needs square holes with the right proportion of space between holes.

Couldn't the SE logo be used instead of the ? bubble? Or a Q&A text instead of the ? in a bubble more similar to the SE logo shape?

I see on other sites that the header with logo and site name can have a different background to not to interfere with the logo and picture at the right.

The picture you took the LED from is created in Fritzing, a popular application to create wiring and breadboard designs. The components in Fritzing have CC license, but I think we should not use the Fritzing LED.
I like the header on Academia. If we can have a picture in the right upper part, there could be more than a LED. For inspiration, the Arduino IDE splash screen and the Arduino site have illustrations with electronic component symbols as characters and ornaments.

Maybe the Ask Question button could be orange.

I think the teal colored question titles don't go well with the green color of accepted question label.

Thank you for your thoughts - it feels like we're pointing to very different themes. I think there is a bit of a consensus about "simple" and "modern" so I'm not sure I'll land where you're hoping. Having said that I will definitely take your point about square holes for the background. And I'm going to change the logo a little bit too, to not use the "?". I tried the SE logo but the colors look a little weird together so I may use words instead. Thanks again

@paintedbicycle, I like the updated logo. Did you try orange for the Ask button?

I did! Sorry I forgot to mention that. The color contrast was really bad (~3:1) with the orange and worse with the yellow so I ended up staying with the teal here

@paintedbicycle, thank you for trying


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
Please don't flag as "Very Low Quality" answers you just don't agree with
The "Very Low Quality" flag has a rather specific meaning, shown when you bring up the flags menu:

This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

See What does the "very low quality" flag mean in regard to answers?
The flag is intended for:

Severe formatting issues
Incomprehensibility
Other severe content problems: This includes answers that don't attempt to answer the question.

Answers that are wrong, or vague, don't come into this category. Just vote the answer down, or make a comment explaining why you don't agree with the answer.
If the answer attempts to answer the question (even if the answer is wrong, or brief) that doesn't qualify it for VLQ flag.
For example, I would describe "read the datasheet" as not attempting to answer the question. However suggesting something that would not work, or would not help, is not very low quality. It's just wrong.


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

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

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

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


text:
Congratulations to Majenko on reaching 20k+ rep!
Our Arduino Stack Exchange site is humming along nicely, and it is appropriate here to congratulate Majenko for being the first to reach 20k rep.
Well done.

@majenko  : also has over 42K reputation on Electrical Engineering (EE SE). The Electrical Engineering knowledge allows his answers here to have broader and more complete answers.  Congratulations Majenko, and thank you for the contributions.

@Marla , note that Majenko hasn't asked any questions on Arduino.SE. Bet because he knows everything already ;D

Oh, I don't know everything, but I do know everything can be found in the datasheet ;)

He's already on his way to 40K :-) ... he's a great guy, he helped me a lot so far in my journey into the Arduino.

Thanks guys :)
I'm just happy to spread knowledge around. Knowledge is worthless if it's hoarded :P

very wise words

Well, you've hoarded quite some knowledge before spreading it ;D Which is quiet useful, because otherwise you'll spread "half-knowledge"?

And now, congratulations on getting 30k rep!

XD :) 8D ;} B[ :P


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

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

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

So, question would be:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


text:
Rejected edit results in loss of constructive code modification
I rejected this suggested edit from an anonymous user, as it clearly conflicted with the original post. The odd thing was though, the edit actually seemed to be rather constructive, as it modified the code (not in an insignificant way), and I was hoping that the suggested edit might be posted as an answer but after having just taken another look at the question I can see that it has not.
Should I post this code modification as an answer myself? By the time that you get around to reading this question, I may have already done so, as it does seem a shame to lost some constructive effort, that was made by someone.
Also, who are these anonymous users? Doesn't anyone who makes an edit actually have to log on to the site? If not, then that seems rather dangerous and foolhardy.

Should I post this code modification as an answer myself?

It seems odd for someone to "answer" a question by editing the question instead of posting an answer.
If you think the edit helps you might make an answer yourself, attributing it to some anonymous editor.

Also, who are these anonymous users?

That's another odd thing. Perhaps the fact that the question was migrated from another part of SE explains that bit.

Cheers, I've posted the answer.

It has happened again, with the same post, very strange. Someone clearly is trying to (possibly legitimately) edit the question. See  here. I have rejected it again, to be on the safe side. If it is the OP, they should just create an account.

It looks like it is the OP - Herioz - (who has an account anyway).

Ok, thanks for looking the account up.  Well I've left a comment on the question. However, it is odd that, as they have an account that it still comes through as anon user... Unless they aren't bothering to log in with it, I guess.

You can always post it as a community wiki. That way you are not taking the credit for the work of someone else.

Good point. I need to revisit that question, it does seem that it was the OP making those edits after all.


text:
Be wary of accepting edits that are comments of third parties
There are still the usual new users, who, as they are unable to leave a comment, try to suggest an edit to the OP's question, in order to get their point on to the page...
I recently rejected this edit, which was by a third party, who did not have sufficient reputation to comment. The edit actually stated as much:

EDIT - Not enough points to comment...
I am programming it in Arduino IDE with C. Also, my hardware works
  fine. I've used it to do other things. The code is what I'm not sure
  what to do.

If one does not check the identity of the author of the edit carefully - against the identity of the OP - it could be assumed by the reviewer (in some cases) that the comment is from the OP (and hence legitimate) in which case, then the edit might be accepted.
As an aside, I am really not sure why new (and inexperienced) users with low reputation are allowed to edit, but not leave a comment, as a bad edit can do much more damage than a bad comment can... but that is a SE issue, in general, and not one that can be resolved on SE Arduino Meta.

One argument could be that the OP can make edits without needing permission, so you should look more cautiously at suggested edits. It is effectively a red flag that this was not the OP. However I'm inclined to agree that if you can't make comments (yet) then you shouldn't be able to slip "comments" in as an edit.


text:
Voting to close new users' questions without comment
This question, How to compile the bootloader mega 2560 to 57600 speed?, by a new user, has four close votes, but no comments.
Yes, it is a terrible question, as it stands, and yes, if it was from a seasoned user, then it could/should be voted to close without  comment, as they should know better.
However, as this is a new user, who probably doesn't understand how SE works, a little prompt in a comment, won't hurt. Yes, they should have read the "tour", but when you are looking for an answer, and you are new to SE, then having to wade through the tour, is the last thing on your mind.
I've left a comment, and if no update appears after a few days then yes, it should be closed, as the user has probably disappeared, found their own solution, or no longer cares.
The point I'm trying to make is that, if you are reviewing, and see a bad question, check to see how long the user has been on the site and bearing in mind that we were all "dumb" new users once, just give them a nod in the right direction...

I would encourage all users to leave a comment if the post needs some work - we all need to be educated about how SE works. I would go further ans say that comments should even comment on experienced users posts if they are not up to scratch. The reason: new users read these posts, so while you might not be educating the OP you will educate all those reading it!

The Arduino SE is a site for newbies (generally speaking) so I think we have to be reasonably tolerant of questions that look a bit vague. If it was Astrophysics Stack Exchange you might expect people to know more about the subject material.


text:
A rash of minor edits
This is not a question (really), but recently I have seen a rash of 10-20 suggested edits, more or less each day, over the past few weeks or so, where the only change was to remove the "Thanks". Now, don't get me wrong, the "Thanks" shouldn't be there, there is a post on SE Meta about it, and I'll add the link if I have time to find it later. I, myself, have also just made edits where the removal of the "Thanks" was the only edit, but that is because the rest of the post was impeccable.
However, the "Thanks" was not, in 90% of these recent cases, the only thing wrong, and the images without description, spelling mistakes, bad grammar, poorly formatted lists and code formatting had been left as they were and were not corrected.
Initially I had clicked upon "Improve Edit", thus giving the previous editor the +2 rep. However, today I have been rejecting all of them, apart from one, as it just seems that lazy editing should not be rewarded.
I have some screen shots as example, but I do not wish to publicly name and shame, and so I will also not name the editor in question - it was the same person in each and every case.
So, I guess that there is a question after all... am I right, or just being a grumpy s*d?

I had paused the review of these edits for a moment or two, and by the time that I came back, I noticed that the remaining 4 or 5 had been approved anyway, again with just the "Thanks" having been removed, leaving behind glaring spelling, grammar and capitalisation mistakes, as well as one of the images not even displaying correctly (the markup was missing the preceeding "!" - note the text "TFT Front Image"). Here is a screenshot of the top of the post:

I do not want to sound like a nitpicker, but could we all try to be a bit more diligent in both edits and approvals, as awarding +2 points for lazy edits will only encourage more sloppy editing.
Addendum
I may be kidding myself here, but I like to think that if people see that their post has been fully edited, that they understand why, take those edits onboard and, hopefully, in their future posts, they then can craft a better, more stylistic (and hopefully easier to read) question or answer (without the "Thanks", typos, spelling mistakes, lack of capitalisation, omission of image descriptions, poor list formatting, question titles written in title case, lack of of code formatting (including the use of the <--language: C --> tag), bad grammar and what have you), or maybe, I have just been working in the field of documentation for too long...

Can you provide a link to this question you took a screenshot of?

@AnonymousPenguin - Arduino Mega 2560 - TFT 3.5 Display is not working with libraries suggested

@Greenonline Here is the link that you are referring to in your post from EE.SE Meta that does not reject removing 'Thanks'. The previous edits could have been a bit sloppy to remove that tail. Question to mods still remains that, would such edits be frowned upon? Is there a separate "edit" guideline for this branch of SE apart from EE.SE?

@Greenonline Another one from meta.SE

@Greenonline another example of a mod removing "unnecessary tail". Please be generous to people cleaning up. Really appreciated!

@Avamander Don't understand how this new edit (8 mins ago) to this post helps?

@ChetanBhargava It is fairly common on SE to remove usernames from examples. It also avoids creating any negative association.

@Avamander I got it, so the OP should have redacted the information in first place? Unfortunately OP is the one harping all about editing and missed the key about editing :-)

@ChetanBhargava - I haven't missed the key about anything. The whole point is, why remove just the "thanks", and not bother to edit and fix all of the remaining issues with the post? I suggest that you carefully re-read my post. Thanks.

There's a rejection reason called "no improvement whatsoever" that applies here. That edit didn't do anything to make the question easier to read or understand, and goodness knows it could've used some of that.
Some folks get all bent out of shape about "thanks" at the end of questions, but I've yet to hear an argument for a simple "thanks" making a question objectively worse; it's at the bottom of the post, it's one word, it doesn't really chew up space and may even make the post seem a bit less demanding. It's not like you're posting a full-on signature that pushes the answers down the page and requires time for readers to parse; it's one word in closing, one superfluous word among many.
And yes... "Thanks" is mostly superfluous and if you're in there editing for other reasons it's probably worth getting rid of... But removing "thanks" while leaving a dozen embarrassing language and formatting errors is kinda just insulting to everyone else who has to read the post, not to mention the author whose post is modified without any appreciable improvement.
These are nuisance edits; please do reject them.

I didn't respond when I first saw this because I wasn't (and still am not) sure. It appears there is nothing wrong with removing these "thanks!" lines, so don't worry about that part.
I asked other moderators, and it seems that all accepted edits award +2 rep, so a "simple" edit does not "steal" rep from a more complex edit.
I must admit there have been times when I edited egregious problems out, without checking for more subtle ones, for example:

Subject in all caps
"Arduino" misspelt as "Ardruino" or similar
Code not formatted
Rambling extra sentences like "hello", "thanks", "goodbye" and "it's urgent!"

However if you have time I think it helps to look more deeply and see if you can spot other things. For one thing, new posts by new users enter the review queue. If you just remove something simple like "Thanks" then that post leaves the review queue, and other problems might be missed. If you don't have time to check in more detail, perhaps postpone editing until you do have.

The bottom line is, the site looks better if we have good questions and good answers. Anything our more experienced users can do to help both of those causes will help improve the reputation of the site as a whole, thereby encouraging more people to visit it.

I agree with you that site looks better without the clutter. This site is still flooded with thanks, TIA, etc.