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<p>As part of the migration to SE 2.0 reputation was recalculated to match the rest of our sites. See: <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/</a> for details.</p>
<p>You can also view the new point system here: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq</a></p>
| 4 | 2010-09-29T19:26:57.957 | |discussion|reputation| | <p>It was in excess of 900 when Chiphacker was still Chiphacker; now it's only 808.</p>
| What happened to my Chiphacker reputation? |
<p>I don't see a point to an electronics tag, when <em>every</em> question on the site is (at least indirectly) related to electronics.</p>
| 7 | 2010-09-29T19:32:11.987 | |discussion|tagging| | <p>Is it a good idea to tag questions with [robotics] or [electronics]?</p>
<p>Or should only the [robotics] tag be used, and all other questions assumed to be electronics?</p>
<p>Or should we adopt a system like on meta, where at least one tag MUST be specified.</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
| Should [robotics] and [electronics] tags be used? |
<p>I'm not sure how that could be considered off-topic. It's part of "robotics, electronics, physical computing, and even those working with an Arduino", no?</p>
| 21 | 2010-09-29T20:51:36.707 | |discussion| | <p>I'd like to get tips about electronics projects with the theme of Christmas. Is this question on or off topic?</p>
| Are questions about ideas for projects on or off topic? |
<p><strong>Short answer:</strong> Yes, they will require a merge, and yes, they are being merged. </p>
<p><strong>Long answer:</strong> For a brief interval, I had also had two accounts: my old Chiphacker mod/user account, as well as an Area51 account, so I merged the two. There weren't any other dupes that I noticed at the time, because the duplicate account isn't created until you log in with the 2.0 account (We might be dealing with this for some time), and I did this within a few minutes after the site opened. Ideally, this would become an automated thing (if it's not already).</p>
<p>Yes, it can and will be done. However, mod resources are stretched right now. On both SE 1.0 and SE 2.0, moderators and administrators can merge accounts. On Chiphacker, everyone with over 2.5k rep was a moderator, along with a few other notable contributors, plus the admins littlebirdceo and mad_z, so things happened pretty fast.</p>
<p>Now, reputation gets you the privileges <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation">described here</a>, the highest of which is a subset of the privileges afforded to a moderator. The privileges afforded to a user with 2,000 rep described in the link consist of everything listed there, the right to see (and undelete) deleted posts, as well as access to these moderation tools (lists of ___):</p>
<ul>
<li>posts flagged as offensive or spam</li>
<li>recently deleted posts</li>
<li>recently closed questions</li>
<li>see all recent edits in chronological order</li>
<li>new posts by new users</li>
<li>questions with newly created tags</li>
<li>new answers to old questions</li>
<li>recent questions with most view velocity</li>
<li>recent questions with most edit velocity</li>
<li>recent questions with most vote velocity</li>
</ul>
<p>Everything else has to be taken care of by someone from Stack Overflow Internet Services, inc. At the present time, that includes Jarrod Dixon, Jeff Atwood, Jin, David Fullerton, Geoff Dalgas, and Robert Cartaino (Denoted by a ♦ by their username). In the future, we can elect moderators from our own ranks.</p>
| 29 | 2010-09-30T03:11:33.507 | |support|user-accounts| | <p>I think several people had SE1.0 chiphacker accounts and SE2.0 accounts. Will they be merged? What if they were not merged?</p>
<p>My chiphacker account and SE2.0 account used the same openid, but they did not automatically merge.</p>
<p>On SE1.0, I think an admin of some sort just merged them by hand. How does this work in SE2.0?</p>
| Will old user accounts be merged with SE 2.0 accounts? |
<p>Just to clarify the badge requirements, to obtain <code>publicist</code> <strong>that unique URL</strong> must be visited by 1000 unique IPs in 5 days (not simply share a link to a question that was already
'hot'). </p>
<p>If you can get 1000 people to view the site legitimately, you deserve a big gold star.</p>
| 37 | 2010-10-01T14:27:54.180 | |discussion|badges| | <p>I was reading this question: <em><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/4658/857">From zero to “almost pro”: Newbie trying to learn. Good, quick resources </a></em> and this image popped up:<br>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/1KQgt.png" alt="share a link to this hot question to earn the publicist badge"><br>
encouraging me to share a link to the question to get a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/badges/56/publicist">badge</a>. It may be that the question has been hit a lot in recent times, but just sharing a link to it shouldn't be worth a gold badge. </p>
<p>Also, I feel that badges should be little rewards along the way, not things you work for (i.e., make edits because they should be made, not to earn an editor badge.)</p>
<p>Can someone explain the purpose of this popup?</p>
<p>Disclaimer: Feel free to navigate to the parent site and find the question (it's likely to be on the first page) if my link above will unfairly grant me a badge. That's exactly the opposite of my motivation for asking this question.</p>
| Publicist badge advertising? |
<p>Er.. what?</p>
<p>Can you provide links to your other account? Or questions and answers provided under it? I only see one "Lance Roberts" at</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/1395">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/1395</a></p>
<p>edit: per <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1256/4310#4310">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1256/4310#4310</a></p>
<p>The original electronics.stackexchange.com <em>was not Chiphacker</em>, it was another site on electronics that didn't have very many questions so we didn't migrate it.</p>
| 39 | 2010-10-01T17:39:31.063 | |bug|support|status-bydesign|user-accounts| | <p>Please merge my old Electronics.StackExchange account with my account here.</p>
| Account merge request |
<p>As both you and Robert stated, questions about the site itself belong here on meta. This is documented. You asked:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1>What is <em>your</em> level of electronics knowledge?</h1>
<p>I've seen several
variations of the type of people <strong>in
this community</strong>: [List snipped] So
what category do <strong>you</strong> fall into?
How do you think <strong>your skill set</strong> is
benefiting <strong>this community</strong>. Do
<strong>you</strong> fall into a different category?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>[emphasis added]</p>
<p>Answers to this question are completely irrelevant to someone who is not a member of the site, who would be looking for information about electronics. The community is a part of the site, and information about the community does not count as information about the topic of the site. If you had asked "What level of electronics knowledge is necessary for job/project/task X, please support with personal experience", then that question would be useful in the future for someone about to embark on job/project/task X.</p>
<p>I think that this question may be useful at the moment, as we progress through the beta stage and try to resolve issues concerning the level of professionalism and expertise on the site. However, it belongs on Meta, because it is about the site.</p>
| 68 | 2010-10-06T14:44:45.583 | |discussion| | <p>What questions belong on the meta site?</p>
<p>Based off of everything that is documented on the website these are the types of questions that belong on the meta site:</p>
<p>(From the banner on the top of the main site)</p>
<ul>
<li>Question about the site itself</li>
<li>What questions are appropriate</li>
<li>What tags we should use</li>
</ul>
<p>(From the Meta FAQ)</p>
<ul>
<li>Are questions about {subject} on or off topic?</li>
<li>What should our FAQ contain?</li>
<li>How should we tag questions about {subject}?</li>
<li>What should our domain name be?</li>
<li>What should our logo and site design look like?</li>
<li>Who should the moderators be?</li>
<li>How do we promote our site?</li>
</ul>
<p>Based off of that, it is very clear that a question like <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55/what-is-your-level-of-electronics-knowledge">the one I asked a few days ago</a> does not belong on the meta site.</p>
<p>If the community thinks a question like that should be on a meta site, the documentation should match this.</p>
| What belongs here versus the main site? |
<p>I think if you are interested in the hobbyist approach to creating a power supply for your computer, that fits perfectly. If you want to know how to wire your house from an electricians perspective, this is a home improvement task, and a different stack exchange is probably a better fit.</p>
<p>Yes, this is a good place to ask if the question fits.</p>
| 94 | 2010-10-20T13:39:42.677 | |discussion|meta| | <p>I'm trying to figure out which StackExchange is best for me to ask detailed questions about 220 volt wiring from the fusebox to my IBM Server.</p>
<p>The Electronics StackExchange appears to be the best choice at first glance, but perhaps I should ask on the Home Improvement StackExchange instead?</p>
<p>For an even more meta request, is meta.electronics.stackexchange.com even the right place to ask where I should be asking the question itself? :-)</p>
| Is Electronics and Robotics the best StackExchange for asking about building wiring to power my 220 volt IBM Server? |
<p>In meta your badges are a separate entity. I received all of my badges on the parent site.</p>
<p>Are you missing yours? I looked on your account and you seem to have badges from answers you gave on the chiphacker site.</p>
| 96 | 2010-10-21T18:56:51.440 | |discussion|badges| | <p>Did all of the badges get reset? Does this happen yearly or is a function of the switchover from Chiphacker? Honestly, I don't care about the badges themselves, just wondering if it's a bug or if I should not flip out this time next year as well.</p>
<p>Seriously, I don't care about the badges.</p>
<p>"Badges? Badges??? We don't need no STEEEKIN badges!"</p>
<p>(sorry, had to be done)</p>
| Did the badges get reset? |
<p>I've seen E&R used as an abbreviation in several places by several people. I think it </p>
<ol>
<li>Is easier to pronounce (You don't try to read it "uhr"), </li>
<li>Is more iconic, and</li>
<li>Distinguishes us from the medical term.</li>
</ol>
<p>I'm not trying to say that the image needs an ampersand to avoid issues of mistaken identity. I hope that any legitimate emergency room logo wouldn't be so sketchy...</p>
| 103 | 2010-10-22T14:17:38.843 | |discussion| | <p>The subsite's logo is ER, which I know as Emergency Room, is that joke on purpose?</p>
| ER: Emergency Room |
<p>To answer it anyway: as long as your link ends up at the right question, it's fine.</p>
<p>Feel free to use url-shortener's to link to questions on things like Twitter, where your chars are valuable! </p>
| 111 | 2010-10-25T02:56:37.693 | |discussion|hyperlinks| | <p>According to the <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/attribution-required/">Attribution Required description</a>, when referencing SE material, we must:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Visually indicate that the content is from Stack Overflow, Meta Stack
Overflow, Server Fault, or Super User
in some way. It doesn’t have to be
obnoxious; a discreet text blurb is
fine. </li>
<li>Hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site (e.g.,
<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345</a>)</li>
<li>Show the author names for every question and answer</li>
<li>Hyperlink each author name directly back to their user profile page on the
source site (e.g.,
<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username">https://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username</a>)</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>However, this is problematic the way I read it because some links have obnoxiously long URLS:<br>
<a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111/can-links-be-shortened-to-just-the-question-answer-user-numbers">Can I shorten links to just the question/answer/user numbers?</a><br>
...which can be replaced with the much shorter URL:<br>
<a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111/">Can I shorten links to just the question/answer/user numbers?</a></p>
<p>It is my understanding that the former link will continue to work if the name of the question is changed <strike>though I have not verified this</strike>. The latter will certainly work.</p>
<p>Is this behavior allowed? It's quite helpful (sometimes absolutely necessary) on character-limited fields like comments and tweets. </p>
<p>I'm not confident on the meaning of "direct". However, please don't interpret this as a request for lawyer-speak on that otherwise well-written and clear attribution page. </p>
| Can I shorten links to just the question/answer/user numbers? |
<p>I recently posted a (<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16264/how-do-i-get-agilent-ads-to-run-on-64-bit-ubuntu-lucid-10-04">question</a>) relating to electronics software and had it closed as off-topic. I think that is taking an overly-narrow view of what constitutes an electronics (or electrical engineering.)</p>
<p>If this site is supposed to be purely academic and theoretical, then I would agree that tools are off-topic. If, however, it is intended to cover the actual practice of electrical engineering then the selection, installation, and use of electronics-related software is highly relevant. If the question is about software that is specific to EE, or about using more general software in an EE-specific way, why <em>wouldn't</em> the question belong on an EE-oriented site?</p>
| 117 | 2010-10-25T23:51:36.697 | |discussion|community-decision| | <p>There <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/5635/which-freeware-analysis-software-most-closely-resembles-the-functionality-of-matl">is a question on the main page that I do not think fits our site</a>, but no one has voted to close.</p>
<p>What is everyone's opinion on this?</p>
| Does this question seem to fit? |
<p><a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/01/announcing-a-new-way-to-change-your-profile-picture/">There is no longer any requirement for gravatar!</a> </p>
| 120 | 2010-10-26T11:36:57.433 | |feature-request|status-completed| | <p>Is there an alternative for displaying an avatar other than Gravatar-</p>
<p>I don't really want to sign up to the Gravatar hosting service, would it be possible to add an option so users could just use an existing image URL?</p>
<p>I have an avatar hosted on another service, it would be more convenient to just cut and paste it, IMO users might be more inclined to have an avatar if they didn't have to sign up to another image hosting service - what's everyones opinion on this?</p>
<p>cheers.</p>
| Is there an alternative to Gravatar? |
<p>Nominations for ♦ Moderators starts at about 30 days after the site graduates from beta. That gives sufficient time for users who do not participate in the beta to use the site before nominations and elections.</p>
<p>The <em>elections</em> will work much in the same way as the <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/02/stack-overflow-2010-moderator-election-begins/" rel="nofollow">blog post you linked</a>. But we are in the process of putting together a fair and impartial nomination process that does not favor folks to post first to a meta thread.</p>
| 123 | 2010-10-26T23:49:21.873 | |discussion| | <p>What's the process for moderator elections?</p>
<p>Do they all follow <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/02/stack-overflow-2010-moderator-election-begins/" rel="nofollow">this pattern</a>?</p>
<p>Who can initiate elections? And how?</p>
| How will moderator elections work? |
<p>I believe that digital signal processing and digital signal processors are relevant topics here.</p>
<p>Processors, because they are hardware devices and electronics hardware is relevant.</p>
<p>Processing, because digital signal processor programming quite often involves having machine-language-level programming skills, which is quite often in the realm of the embedded designer (and, of course, embedded design is a relevant topic here.)</p>
<p>Also, as previously stated, the mathematics behind digital signal processing are generally taught in EE course streams more so than comp sci AFAIK.</p>
| 126 | 2010-10-27T15:34:11.607 | |discussion| | <p>In the last few days we have had a few questions related to DSP.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/5712/how-to-compare-two-audio-files">How to compare two audio files?</a></p>
<p>and</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/5635/which-freeware-analysis-software-most-closely-resembles-the-functionality-of-matl">Which freeware analysis software most closely resembles the functionality of Matlab DSP toolbox</a></p>
<p>The first question I linked to has been suggested to be better in stack overflow by endolith. While the second question was defended to stay on our site by both Joby Taffey and reemrevnivek here: <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/117/does-this-question-seem-to-fit">Does this question seem to fit?</a></p>
<p>I have looked at the Stack Overflow tag for DSP and was actually rather unhappy. There are 157 questions tagged with the DSP tag, but most of them have gotten very little attention, especially for how active Stack Overflow is. I think this may be a case that the Stack Overflow experts are mostly Computer Science guys where as the experts on our site tend to be more in the Electrical Engineering field. In my experience EEs are much better suited to answer a DSP question then Computer Science guys.</p>
<p>So, where do you think we should draw the line here? DSP does tend to be much more programming oriented, which is what Stack Overflow is intended for however, our community seems to be better suited to answer the questions.</p>
| Does DSP fall into our realm or Stack overflows realm? |
<p>I'd like to pitch a name idea here; I couldn't find a Q&A thread where that's being done.</p>
<h2>ElectronFlow</h2>
<p>Electronics and Robotics: Engineering and Design</p>
| 149 | 2010-11-09T20:15:42.620 | |discussion| | <p>I have noticed that we have many more questions being asked about consumer electronics that do not fall into the scope of this site. I think some of this confusion comes from "Electronics" in our name. Might there be a better name for this site?</p>
<p>I am not sure, just throwing this out there to see what others think.</p>
| Possible Name Change? |
<p>If the question can be totally answered with a link to Wikipedia/by cut-and-pasting part of the article, it should be closed as it is too broad.</p>
<p>If the question is diving into any specifics, sure, ask away.</p>
| 170 | 2010-11-23T23:23:16.533 | |discussion| | <p>What do we feel about questions for novices?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"What is Ohm's law?"</p>
<p>"Explain the difference between AC and
DC"</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Would we be replicating the Wikipedia page?</p>
<p>Would multiple overlapping answers be a good or bad thing?</p>
<p>Would beginner questions be doing someone's homework for them?</p>
<p>I would be in favour of these questions - so long as they were Community Wiki, with a cultivated answer leading to more detailed questions.</p>
| Google and the lowest common denominator |
<p>Sadly for you Stack Overflow only has migration paths for graduated sites.</p>
<p>On top of that, I fear that the overlap with Stack Overflow isn't large enough to justify a migration path. </p>
<p>So, it's better to just ask the question here again. Duplication doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially when the communities are so different.</p>
| 173 | 2010-11-30T13:31:58.607 | |support| | <p>I'd like to transfer my questions from Stackoverflow to E&R. I made some questions there that fit better here. How is the best way to do this?</p>
| Transfer question from SO to E&R |
<p>examples:</p>
<p>Q5: What contrast voltage worked for you using Atmel's maxTouch products?</p>
<ul>
<li><em>possible tags: Atmel, maXTouch, touch, AVR</em></li>
<li><em>tags I would exclude: AVR, maXTouch</em></li>
<li><em>remaining tags: Atmel, touch</em></li>
</ul>
<p>Argument:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>AVR</em> : Has little to do with AVR. If you want to get all of Atmel's stuff, follow both <em>AVR</em> and <em>Atmel</em>.</li>
<li><em>maXTouch</em> : very little use. 'Guess I wouldn't remove it, but wait for it to expire in 6 months.</li>
</ul>
| 180 | 2010-12-10T01:10:53.507 | |discussion| | <p>I see E&R is using both <em>pic</em> and <em>microchip</em> as tags. <em>microchip</em> is too ambiguous to be effective. Many users may tag their question with it, seeing many matches, if they are using any old IC, or "microchip", in their design, not realizing that it is a company name. Also, any question using a PIC will have both tags.</p>
<p>On the other hand Microchip makes much more than PICs, and deleting this tag may not be seen as fair since both <em>atmel</em> and <em>avr</em> tags are being used.</p>
<p>Could we limit ourselves to tagging questions related to a well-known product line with only a tag related to that product line, not the company; and get rid of the the tag 'microchip'? This would allow, for example, questions related to Atmel's ARM offerings to be tagged with both <em>atmel</em> and <em>arm</em>; but would not allow questions related to the AVR32 line to be tagged with <em>atmel</em>.</p>
| meta-tag debate: Microchip (and PIC), Atmel (and AVR) |
<p>Should be all fixed.</p>
<p>There are synonyms in the correct direction now. let me know if there are more you have problems with.</p>
| 189 | 2010-12-16T19:48:33.383 | |discussion|tags|tag-synonyms| | <p>The following tags (specifically their synonym associations are backwards) seem awkward:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/recommend">recommend</a> should be "recommendations", e.g. "This question is about recommendations ...", as the (plural) answers will be recommendations</li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/book">book</a> should be "books", usually this will be a plea for recommendations. Plus "books" agrees with SO.</li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/markings/synonyms">marking</a> should be markings</li>
</ul>
| Awkward tag conjugations |
<p>So <strong>"about a job title"</strong> is too specific, but <strong>"<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7637/can-you-identify-this-logo/7640#7640">identify this logo</a>"</strong> is not?... How hypocritical. The question was perfectly fine IMO.</p>
| 190 | 2010-12-16T20:11:13.193 | |discussion|closed-questions| | <p>I am wondering about the reason given for closing the question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7933/where-would-a-robotic-engineer-work-closed">Where would a robotic engineer work?</a>. It was closed as "too localized".</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"This question would only be relevant
to a small geographic area, a specific
moment in time, or an extraordinarily
narrow situation that is not generally
applicable to the worldwide audience
of the internet."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I was one of those who answered this question. I work for an international supplier of industrial robots. I do not consider a robotics career to be limited in time or geography. I interact with robot users and colleagues from around the world.</p>
<p>I am not necessarily arguing to reopen the question. I just want to understand the reason for closing it. </p>
| Closed Question: Where would a robotic engineer work? |
<p>$$R1 \parallel R2 = \frac{R_{1}R_{2}}{R_{1}+R_{2}}$$</p>
<p>$$P = IV = I^{2}R = \frac{V^{2}}{R}$$</p>
| 192 | 2010-12-17T17:17:06.483 | |bug|status-completed|tex| | <p>Want (La)TeX. 'nuff said. </p>
<p>e.g. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8011/getting-higher-power-output-by-using-more-resistors/8014#8014">Ugly single-line equations</a></p>
<p>The problem is still here, two months later. I could add some more examples which I've read and written in the meantime, but it seems blatantly obvious that a site for engineers should have better markup for equations than plan text. In fact, it's so obvious that I'm altering the tags on this question to mark it as a bug. The feature exists, it's just not activated, and it's a bug that this site doesn't have [La]TeX.</p>
<p>Test: $\TeX$</p>
| TeX should be supported on E&R, like on Math.SE, et. al. |
<p>When a question is borderline, I think what you need to consider is</p>
<ul>
<li>how much 'broken windows' harm will leaving this type question around on the site cause? If other users see this and think it's on topic to ask this class of question, how bad would that be?</li>
<li>is this a quality question? is this a quality person we would want contributing to our site?</li>
</ul>
<p>See:<br>
<a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/</a></p>
| 193 | 2010-12-17T18:36:14.403 | |discussion|scope| | <p>We have had a number of questions come in that were clearly consumer electronics, but now we have a few coming in that are boundary questions.</p>
<p>There are a few specific instances we have just had both about <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7992/does-leaving-a-cell-phone-on-charge-all-the-time-weaken-the-battery-and-why">batteries</a>and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7990/could-my-cell-phone-battery-be-degrading">batteries</a>. One was closed, which I reopened because 2 of the 5 votes were for duplicate, please forgive me if you thought I was trying to overrule you, I am trying to make sure we get this consistent as a community.</p>
<p>Currently I think they received some close votes because they were asked in such quick succession by the OP. Lets have a talk, Do these cross the boundary? Should we smash questions that are right on the boundary, or should we keep them open and hope it brings in a few engineers that need help also></p>
| What line do we draw for consumer electronics? |
<p>No. </p>
| 312 | 2010-12-24T01:09:35.167 | |discussion| | <h1>grep</h1>
<ol>
<li>To gather information related to a particular subject from a large amount of data.</li>
<li>To ascertain the meaning or function of an explanation.</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8231/what-are-programmable-logic-ics-of-different-complexity-used-for">I can't grep reliable guidelines by which to narrow design options.</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is the verb "grep" too geeky for E&R?</p>
| Is the verb "grep" too geeky for E&R? |
<p>On new sites, it is <em>critical</em> that you are visiting this URL every day:</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review</a></p>
<p>You want to be vetting all the new users that come in to the site, helping the ones that seem salvageable, and gently (if implicitly) shoo-ing away the less clueful / useful ones.</p>
<p>This means reviewing all new content by new users -- if it's awesome, vote it up and let them know! If it needs a bit of editing to be in tip-top shape, do so! If the user needs a bit of constructive comment feedback, well, share it!</p>
<p>Bear in mind the Pee-Wee Herman rule:</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/the-pee-wee-herman-rule/</a></p>
| 316 | 2010-12-28T12:54:44.087 | |discussion| | <p>The StackExchange community is different from <a href="http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/index.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">other forums</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">communities</a>, or <a href="http://www.wikipedia.org" rel="nofollow noreferrer">wikis</a>. It is a great stew of democracy, community editing, self moderation, and wonderfully simple standard formatting. New users won't get it right away, which <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9953/could-we-please-be-a-bit-nicer-to-the-noobs">can lead to awkward confrontations</a>. Communicating and supporting one's question in a way that fosters quality answers is a skill earned through practice and awareness -- hopefully I can help with the latter (the former eludes me yet).</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>title</strong>: keep it as short and to the point as possible. You don't have to describe your question exactly, just the jist of it. Cut <em>filler words</em>, like any of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws" rel="nofollow noreferrer">5 W's</a>. If you think the title is a bit long, such as if it wraps to a second line, eliminate the least important identifiers, but not to the point of making the title ambiguous or vague. An example is <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/8284/revisions">here</a>, though the "How To" stuck:
<ul>
<li><strong>original</strong>: <code>HELP: How would i sample an audio tract at nyquist frequency using c and a micro-controller?</code></li>
<li><strong>revised</strong>: <code>How to sample audio at Nyquist frequency with MSP430F5438?</code><br><br></li>
</ul></li>
<li><strong><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions">tags</a></strong>: similar guidelines to forming a title, but you have less choice, as using common tags appropriately usually has more value for the community than making new ones. As mentioned in <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18878/how-do-i-correctly-tag-my-questions/18879#18879">the SO FAQ</a> and something I have trouble with, <em>Don't try to summarize your question using the tags.</em><br><br></li>
<li><p><strong>question</strong>: it needs to attract readers to the point to where they want to answer your question. This implies <strong>legibility</strong>, <strong>conciseness</strong>, and <strong>structure</strong>, all of which take <strong><em>effort</em></strong>. </p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>legibility</strong>: modern browsers come with automatic spell checkers, so use them. Nobody really cares all that much about grammar, but they will notice the <em>effort</em> expunged in well written pieces.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>conciseness</strong>: Large blocks of text are like eating dry toast, so keep it short; again, cull <em>filler words</em> -- not to the extent as in titles, but wherever it doesn't change the meaning of a sentence. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>structure</strong>: this is all about using this forum's limited style palette to make your question (and answers) easier to understand. On the right side of your browser window you should <a href="http://www.tyblu.ca/misc/ER_2010-12-28.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">see the <em>"How to Format"</em> window</a>, giving a link to the <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/editing-help">available markdown</a> and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1777/what-html-tags-are-allowed">allowable HTML</a>.<br><br><em>Whitespace is important</em> -- it gives the reader space to breathe! For example, I intentionally put spaces between these sub-bullets, as there is too much text in each to sandwich them together and expect the reader not to shy away. <br><br></p>
<h3>Common issues -- must skim:</h3>
<ol>
<li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem">The XY Problem</a></li>
<li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/how-to-ask-and-answer-homework-questions">How to ask and answer homework questions?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Help Vampires</a></li>
</ol></li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p><sup>Oh, and here's a badge:</sup> <a href="http://kevinx.net/labs/php/badge.php?txt=42" rel="nofollow noreferrer">tyblu http://kevinx.net/labs/php/badge.php?txt=Read%20Through%20One%20Of%20tyblu%27s%20Megalong%20Questions</a> <sup>. Put it on the fridge.</sup></p>
| Asking Questions And Getting Answers |
<p>This is all taken care of.</p>
<p>Solar now redirects to solar-cell. If this does not work out well we can fix it in the future.</p>
| 330 | 2011-01-03T19:23:50.570 | |support|tags| | <p><strong>Resolved</strong></p>
<p>
All <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'solar'" rel="tag">solar</a> should be <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/solar-cell" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'solar-cell'" rel="tag">solar-cell</a>, which is less vague. </p>
<p>Maybe make <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/photovoltaic-cell" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'photovoltaic-cell'" rel="tag">photovoltaic-cell</a> or <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pv-cell" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'pv-cell'" rel="tag">pv-cell</a> point to it too, though that will probably never be a problem.</p>
| Tag Cleanup: rename [solar] to [solar-cell] |
<p>I was about to ask a question if we should even have the computer tag at all.</p>
<p>Computers is a very broad term.</p>
<p>Also 3 of the 14 questions that have been tagged with it have been closed.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>I don't mean to start a discussion here about if the question should be opened or closed. I am focusing more on if the tag is good or not.</p>
<p>I think @reemrevnivek hit the nail on the head in a comment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The single [computers] tag is probably
not the right thing for this question,
and makes it look off-topic. Any
device which is plugged into AC power
and has a power rating like an AC
motor, light, or heater/air
conditioner would have a very similar
question. A PC just has the issues of
the switching power supply and varying
load requirements to differentiate it.
I'd add the [power], [power-supply],
and [power-meter] tags to the question
(but only if we want to reopen it).</p>
</blockquote>
| 334 | 2011-01-06T11:19:07.613 | |discussion|tags| | <p>Should <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'computer'" rel="tag">computer</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computers" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'computers'" rel="tag">computers</a> be merged? Which one should be used? <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/computers" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'computers'" rel="tag">computers</a> is used the most.</p>
| Merging Computers/Computer Tags |
<p>There was a site called "Automotive Electronics Development" a couple months ago. However, it was closed down in Pruning Season as being too niche in comparison to E&R. </p>
<p>I know this because I was a follower (one of ~30). Now, it's only existence is a few comments in the Google cache that can be found by searching for <em>"Automotive Electronics Development" site:area51.stackexchange.com</em>. </p>
<p>Ask your Automotive Electronics Development questions here!</p>
<p>If your source for automotive electronics is the Advance Auto down the road, however, you're probably better off asking a mechanic for now and following the <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1321/motor-vehicle-maintenance-and-repair">Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Repair</a> proposal for later.</p>
| 341 | 2011-01-07T21:49:03.357 | |discussion|asking-questions| | <p>I'm an active member of stackoverflow.com and I was looking to see if the stackexchange suite of sites had an automotive one. This was the closest I could find. Is it appropriate to ask automotive questions on this site? It's not really a electronic automotive question...</p>
| Automotive questions appropriate for this site? |
<p>If it's about electronics or DSP, it fits on Electronics & Robotics. Write the entire question down instead of linking to a question in other forum, but I don't see an issue with additionally linking to show you have looked.</p>
| 355 | 2011-01-15T11:13:16.213 | |discussion|asking-questions|legal| | <p>Hi all, I´m usually use other manufacturer forums to search specific information with their manufacturer tools. For instance, now I´m using System Generator that is Xilinx ise design program that works through simulink (Matlab). Af first glance I wouldn´t use this site to ask questions related with SG because Xilinx provides his own forum about this program, so I use the one Xilinx provide.
I did a easy question in that forum and I don´t get any answer so I was thinking about to ask the question in this forum (Even I know the best forum for SG questions should be the Xilinx Forum)
I think may be, it could be interesting practice if this questions are related with other questions asked from this forum. My question could be related with other questions of this forum because it´s related with a implementation issue and this kinds of questions deal with essentials issues in the wide electronics world.</p>
<p>I could do it?</p>
| It´s a correct practice to put links to questions from other forums? |
<p>Well, we are trying to make the tools self documenting. Which tools in particular did you need guidance on, what do you think those pages should say on them to help you?</p>
| 362 | 2011-01-20T00:20:02.283 | |support|moderation| | <p>I'm looking for some documentation on the moderation tools. I am aware of the <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=links">tools page</a>, and I can see the various 'edit' and 'synonyms' links when I explore the site. </p>
<p>However, I really don't want to just poke around and break something. I've seen a number of times where a user with new tag edits will start bumping all kinds of old questions to the front page for little grammar fixes, and I don't want to force a mod to go back into the database and undo something I screwed up. Where can I read up on when and how to use these abilities?</p>
<p>I feel like I'm learning how to use a terminal all over again. I'm staring at a blinking prompt, wondering what to type. <code>man [letters]</code> produces interesting things for some values of [letters], and those are all reasonably well documented, but that doesn't mean I know how to use the computer. To learn the terminal, it's easy enough to set up a VM and poke around until something good or bad happens, but E&R isn't a VM. It's a live system that affects a lot of people.</p>
| Documentation for moderator tools |
<p>You can flag a question for moderator attention if you think it requires a new tag and you lack the rep to create a new tag -- simply click the "flag" link.</p>
| 365 | 2011-01-22T17:24:42.320 | |discussion|tags|tagging| | <p>Hi all, I am not still have enough privileges to create new tags in this not meta site. Is there any way to suggest new tags to anyone who have enough privileges?
The new tags I suggest are: floating point arithmetic or floating point operations.
Thank you so much.</p>
| How can I suggest new tags? |
<ul>
<li>I would call <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/line-power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'line-power'" rel="tag">line-power</a> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mains-power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'mains-power'" rel="tag">mains-power</a>, but that may be a local thing. Is it <em>"line power"</em> across the US?</li>
<li>I like the tag <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/low-power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'low-power'" rel="tag">low-power</a>, and it appears to have been used correctly so far. May need an edit or two every now and then; <strike>maybe even a wiki if one of us ever earns it.</strike> <em>My goodness, there are plenty of users that can create this wiki, even me! Guess I should get off my butt!</em></li>
<li>The <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'voltage'" rel="tag">voltage</a> tags will be quite the operation. Will have to just do a few every day to spread out the damage. This is how I've been doing the <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/115/2118">meta tags</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p><em>Just edited <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/9346/revisions">this post</a> with this note:</em></p>
<blockquote>
<pre><code>Phasing out the tags [voltage] and [current]: https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/372/2118
</code></pre>
</blockquote>
| 372 | 2011-01-24T03:26:22.200 | |discussion|tags| | <p>Another set of hilarious tags: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'voltage'" rel="tag">voltage</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/current" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'current'" rel="tag">current</a>, and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'power'" rel="tag">power</a> Almost everything that isn't software could use all of those tags.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'voltage'" rel="tag">voltage</a> questions should likely be along the lines of:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage-measurement" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'voltage-measurement'" rel="tag">voltage-measurement</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage-regulator" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'voltage-regulator'" rel="tag">voltage-regulator</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/level-shifting" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'level-shifting'" rel="tag">level-shifting</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/high-voltage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'high-voltage'" rel="tag">high-voltage</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/undervoltage" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'undervoltage'" rel="tag">undervoltage</a></li>
<li>or removed entirely (80-99% of the time)</li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/current" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'current'" rel="tag">current</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/current-measurement" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'current-measurement'" rel="tag">current-measurement</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/current-source" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'current-source'" rel="tag">current-source</a></li>
<li>or removed entirely</li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'power'" rel="tag">power</a> <strike>and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/supply" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'supply'" rel="tag">supply</a> (<a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1007/usefulness-of-the-supply-tag?rq=1">see also</a>)</strike>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/power-supply" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'power-supply'" rel="tag">power-supply</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/low-power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'low-power'" rel="tag">low-power</a>, (almost as bad, as it's subjective and varies a lot across fields and skill-levels.)</li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/line-power" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'line-power'" rel="tag">line-power</a> (just made that tag, is there already one? mains/ac-power/wall-power...)</li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/power-electronics" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'power-electronics'" rel="tag">power-electronics</a> (this could be fraught with peril)</li>
<li>or removed entirely</li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/charge" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'charge'" rel="tag">charge</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/battery-charging" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'battery-charging'" rel="tag">battery-charging</a></li>
<li>or removed entirely</li>
</ul></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/circuit" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'circuit'" rel="tag">circuit</a>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/circuit-analysis" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'circuit-analysis'" rel="tag">circuit-analysis</a></li>
<li>or removed entirely</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>
<p>Thoughts on removing/retagging questions with P/I/V as they appear?</p>
<p>Their physical counterparts <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/capacitor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'capacitor'" rel="tag">capacitor</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/resistor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'resistor'" rel="tag">resistor</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/inductor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'inductor'" rel="tag">inductor</a>, or other circuit elements are also very prone to abuse, but questions are generally focused on them in some manner.</p>
| Tags: Voltage, current, and power (oh my) |
<p>Please see</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help</a></p>
<ol>
<li><p>You must indent code 8 spaces if you want it to be code formatted <em>as part of the list</em>.</p></li>
<li><p>If you need code formatting immediately following a list (but <strong>not as a part of the list</strong>) then you need to either insert a paragraph between or a no-op HTML tag like a HTML comment </p></li>
</ol>
| 383 | 2011-01-29T19:05:02.877 | |support|formatting| | <p>Something was breaking in <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/9523/2118">this question</a>. A code-formatted block follows a numbered list, and the code isn't <code><pre></code>-formatted. I'm guessing that it has to do with the many <code><</code> and <code>></code> symbols involved. Workaround is to put a dummy tag between the list and code block.</p>
<h1>example text:</h1>
<pre><code>A ***CORDIC division*** is implemented using ***CORDIC multiplication***, rearranging as follows:
c = a/b
a - c*b = 0
For the multiplication `z = x*y`:
> <sup>[[source]][2]</sup> ***z*** is composed of shifted versions of ***y***. The unknown value for ***z***, may be found by driving ***x*** to zero 1 bit at a time. If the *i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup>* bit of ***x*** is nonzero, ***y**<sup><sup> </sup>i</sup>* is right shifted by *i* bits and added to the current value of ***z***. The *i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup>* bit is then removed from ***x*** by subtracting *2<sup>-i</sup>* from ***x***. If ***x*** is negative, the *i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup>* bit in the twos complement format would be removed by adding *2<sup>-i</sup>*. In either case, when ***x*** has been driven to zero all bits have been examined and ***z*** contains the signed product of ***x*** and ***y*** correct to *B* bits.
>This algorithm is similar to the standard shift and add multiplication algorithm except for two important features:
> 1. Arithmetic right shifts are used instead of left shifts, allowing signed numbers to be used.
> 2. Computing the product to *B* bits with the CORDIC algorithm is equivalent to rounding the result of the standard algorithm to the most significant *B* bits.
> divide_4q(x,y){
> for (i=1; i=<B; i++){
> if (x > 0)
> if (y > 0)
> x = x - y*2^(-i);
> z = z + 2^(-i);
> else
> x = x + y*2^(-i);
> z = z - 2^(-i);
> else
> if (y > 0)
> x = x + y*2^(-i);
> z = z - 2^(-i);
> else
> x = x - y*2^(-i);
> z = z + 2^(-i);
> }
> return(z)
> }
</code></pre>
<h1>Broken result:</h1>
<blockquote>
<p>A <strong><em>CORDIC division</em></strong> is implemented
using <strong><em>CORDIC multiplication</em></strong>,
rearranging as follows:</p>
<pre><code>c = a/b
a - c*b = 0
</code></pre>
<p>For the multiplication <code>z = x*y</code>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><sup><a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/184404244" rel="nofollow noreferrer">[source]</a></sup> <strong><em>z</em></strong> is composed of shifted versions of
<strong><em>y</em></strong>. The unknown value for <strong><em>z</em></strong>, may be found by driving <strong><em>x</em></strong> to zero 1 bit at a time. If the <em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit
of <strong><em>x</em></strong> is nonzero,
<strong><em>y</strong><sup><sup> </sup>i</sup></em> is right shifted by <em>i</em> bits and added to
the current value of <strong><em>z</em></strong>. The
<em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit is then removed from <strong><em>x</em></strong> by
subtracting <em>2<sup>-i</sup></em> from
<strong><em>x</em></strong>. If <strong><em>x</em></strong> is negative, the <em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit in the twos complement format would be
removed by adding <em>2<sup>-i</sup></em>. In
either case, when <strong><em>x</em></strong> has been
driven to zero all bits have been
examined and <strong><em>z</em></strong> contains the
signed product of <strong><em>x</em></strong> and <strong><em>y</em></strong>
correct to <em>B</em> bits.</p>
<p>This algorithm is similar to the standard shift and add multiplication
algorithm except for two important
features:</p>
<ol>
<li>Arithmetic right shifts are used instead of left shifts, allowing
signed numbers to be used.</li>
<li><p>Computing the product to <em>B</em> bits with the CORDIC algorithm is
equivalent to rounding the result of
the standard algorithm to the most
significant <em>B</em> bits.</p>
<p>divide_4q(x,y){
for (i=1; i= 0)
if (y > 0)
x = x - y*2^(-i);
z = z + 2^(-i);
else
x = x + y*2^(-i);
z = z - 2^(-i);
else<br>
if (y > 0)
x = x + y*2^(-i);
z = z - 2^(-i);
else
x = x - y*2^(-i);
z = z + 2^(-i);
}
return(z)
}</p></li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<h1>Fixed result:<br></h1>
<p><sup><em>(with <code><tyblus-unbreak-tag></code> between numbered list and code block)</em></sup></p>
<blockquote>
<p>A <strong><em>CORDIC division</em></strong> is implemented
using <strong><em>CORDIC multiplication</em></strong>,
rearranging as follows:</p>
<pre><code>c = a/b
a - c*b = 0
</code></pre>
<p>For the multiplication <code>z = x*y</code>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><sup><a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/184404244" rel="nofollow noreferrer">[source]</a></sup> <strong><em>z</em></strong> is composed of shifted versions of
<strong><em>y</em></strong>. The unknown value for <strong><em>z</em></strong>, may be found by driving <strong><em>x</em></strong> to zero 1 bit at a time. If the <em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit
of <strong><em>x</em></strong> is nonzero,
<strong><em>y</strong><sup><sup> </sup>i</sup></em> is right shifted by <em>i</em> bits and added to
the current value of <strong><em>z</em></strong>. The
<em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit is then removed from <strong><em>x</em></strong> by
subtracting <em>2<sup>-i</sup></em> from
<strong><em>x</em></strong>. If <strong><em>x</em></strong> is negative, the <em>i<sup><sup> </sup>th</sup></em> bit in the twos complement format would be
removed by adding <em>2<sup>-i</sup></em>. In
either case, when <strong><em>x</em></strong> has been
driven to zero all bits have been
examined and <strong><em>z</em></strong> contains the
signed product of <strong><em>x</em></strong> and <strong><em>y</em></strong>
correct to <em>B</em> bits.</p>
<p>This algorithm is similar to the standard shift and add multiplication
algorithm except for two important
features:</p>
<ol>
<li>Arithmetic right shifts are used instead of left shifts, allowing
signed numbers to be used.</li>
<li>Computing the product to <em>B</em> bits with the CORDIC algorithm is
equivalent to rounding the result of
the standard algorithm to the most
significant <em>B</em> bits.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p></p>
<blockquote>
<pre><code>divide_4q(x,y){
for (i=1; i=<B; i++){
if (x > 0)
if (y > 0)
x = x - y*2^(-i);
z = z + 2^(-i);
else
x = x + y*2^(-i);
z = z - 2^(-i);
else
if (y > 0)
x = x + y*2^(-i);
z = z - 2^(-i);
else
x = x - y*2^(-i);
z = z + 2^(-i);
}
return(z)
}
</code></pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
| Code formatting following numbered list breaks |
<p>If we ever get a ton of Xilinx questions that would be a good tag, but until then it's going to be overly narrow.</p>
| 388 | 2011-02-02T16:40:51.387 | |feature-request|tags|asking-questions| | <p>Does anyone create a tag for the xilinx program called 'System Generator'?
Thank you so much!</p>
| Asking for a System Generator tag. |
<p>Sorry, this should be fixed now.</p>
| 390 | 2011-02-04T07:59:20.043 | |bug|status-completed| | <p>Today I found the oragne button.<br>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/y1IuU.png" alt="suggested edits"></p>
<p>Unfortunately, when I click on it, I get sent to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits</a>
which gives me Page Not Found error.
What's going on?</p>
| Suggested edits pending approval leads to nowhere. |
<p>I assume this is in reference to your question <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/9766/what-half-bandgap-voltage-reference-is">What half-bandgap voltage reference is?</a></p>
<p>The <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/01af3c32-8a39-44f8-88dc-fc832ccf3561/view-source">first revision</a> was:</p>
<pre><code>I came across term "half bandgap voltage reference". I expect it is somehow
related to [bandgap circuit]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandgap_voltage_reference>). Do you know what it
is, know its schematic or principle of operation?
</code></pre>
<p>Which should work less that trailing <code>></code> in the URL which would be the inline version of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Markdown</a> linking. The live preview may have ignored it while the server's parser got confused and gave up. (The preview and actual results are often very different. <code><sarcasm?></code>As best as I can tell, the devs don't care and this will never be fixed as it's been like that for since I've been using SO/SE.<code></sarcasm?></code>)</p>
<p>Apparently you ultimately used a standard HTML <code><a></code> tag, which does work along with a <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1777/what-html-tags-are-allowed-on-stack-overflow-server-fault-and-super-user">very limited set</a>.</p>
<p>If you use the link tool in a post, which <em>almost always</em> works, it uses the reference Markdown link style, doing something like:</p>
<pre><code>Lorum ipsum [first revision][1] dolor
...Sic quod veritas...
[1]: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/01af3c32-8a39-44f8-88dc-
fc832ccf3561/view-source
</code></pre>
| 392 | 2011-02-05T08:55:20.623 | |support|hyperlinks| | <p>When typing in question:</p>
<p>I came across term "half bandgap voltage reference". I expect it is somehow related to ">bandgap circuit. Do you know what it is, know its schematic or principle of operation?</p>
<p>The link is not displayed correctly in the browser (while it is correctly displayed in the preview).</p>
<p>I am using FF 3.6.13</p>
| Inserting link bug |
<p>Like this: </p>
<pre><code>[Link text](http://www.example.com)
</code></pre>
<p>The same syntax also works in questions. See <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37758/inline-links-in-comments">this meta.SO feature request</a> for the original request. </p>
<p>Also, you can always click the 'help' link at the bottom-right of the comment box to bring up this text: </p>
<pre>
Comments use mini-Markdown formatting: [link](http://example.com)
_italic_ **bold** `code`. The post author will automatically be
notified of your comment. To notify a previous commenter, mention
their user name: @peter or @PeterSmith will both work.
</pre>
<p>See also <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2115/text-formatting-now-allowed-in-comments-list-of-proven-and-disproven-abilities">this question</a> for known bugs.</p>
| 397 | 2011-02-07T19:26:02.850 | |support|comments|markdown| | <p>I want just the text to show up as a link, no URL. I've tried the basic HTML </p>
<pre><code><a href="www.bing.com">Check out this new website I found</a>
</code></pre>
<p>but it doesn't work.</p>
| How can I use a URL in a comment? |
<p>I would think <strong><em>yes</em></strong>, it is acceptable, but not very interesting, and may not get much effort put into responses. A question should be definitively answerable (and the CW option used sparingly, not just to mask bad questions). It would be better to ask multiple questions, each with a different goal though they may all use the same circuit diagram (or sections of the same one).</p>
<p>Maybe look at how this question panned out: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/8453/2118">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/8453/2118</a></p>
<p>It has a more specific goal than general circuit check, but was still quite general and received little attention.</p>
| 399 | 2011-02-07T21:33:36.337 | |discussion| | <p>Is it acceptable to post a question (with the community wiki option) along the lines of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Please review this circuit design for
doing blah and let me know how it can
be improved / is anything wrong with
it from a common design perspective:</p>
<p>--Insert Diagram Here--</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This type of question seems to be electronics equivalent of coderview.stackexchange.com</p>
| Circuit review acceptable? |
<p>These are new privileged and changed badges, so this is by design.</p>
| 405 | 2011-02-10T14:18:47.967 | |bug|status-bydesign|badges| | <p>I logged in this morning to find that I'd received the privilege of protecting questions, which requires about half the reputation that I currently have, and, upon logging into Meta, that I'd earned the "Citizen Patrol" badge for my first flagged post: an operation which I'd done some time ago, and haven't done recently. </p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/MTfUT.png" alt="Protect questions screenshot"></p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/alJIs.png" alt="Citizen Patrol badge"></p>
<p>Are these new? Did something get reset? Is it a bug?</p>
| Random privileges and badges popping up |
<p>Does it even make sense to group multiple organizations into one tag? I'd rather tag IEEE-related questions <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ieee" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'ieee'" rel="tag">ieee</a>, SAE: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sae" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'sae'" rel="tag">sae</a>, and so on.</p>
<p>If you're looking for standards in general, then I'd just go with just <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standards" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standards'" rel="tag">standards</a>.</p>
| 412 | 2011-02-17T04:26:20.403 | |discussion|tags| | <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standard" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standard'" rel="tag">standard</a> is general, and apt to be misused. Something related to <strong>standards organizations</strong> would be helpful, though. Examples: IEEE, ISO.</p>
<p>What could cover them all? Do you think this would be useful?</p>
<p>Example: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standards-organization" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standards-organization'" rel="tag">standards-organization</a>.</p>
<p>Example of use: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/10327/2118">Standard nomenclature for component types</a></p>
| in search of: official standards organization tag |
<p>No, you should ask it as a separate question. In your <em>new</em> question, you can reference the previous post but please do not ask a question in a question.</p>
<p>On Stack Exchange, questions are very specific and each answer is a self-contained response to that question. If you start adding followup questions (i.e. question > answer > question > answer), that becomes a <em>discussion</em> and that is not what we do here.</p>
| 415 | 2011-02-18T15:36:30.520 | |discussion| | <p>There's an older question that had an answer accepted long ago, but the project in discussion is very similar to one I am currently working on. Is it okay to ask for additional information regarding the project that the question was about? The poster of the question probably had to overcome the particular problem I am having, but it is not discussed in the question they ask.</p>
<p><strong>For example:</strong></p>
<p><em>Original Question:</em> How do you use a PMOS to kill power to an SD card from a PIC microcontroller?</p>
<p><em></em></p>
<p><em>My Question:</em> How did you prevent current from leaking through the SD card's signal lines?</p>
| Is it okay to ask a question as an 'answer' to a question? |
<p>Hi.</p>
<p>This is the OP of the question that triggered this one. </p>
<p>I don't understand this attitude at all :</p>
<p>1) there are many questions where you have a problem but don't yet know the solution. I need something that does X but I don't know if the solution is to buy an existing product (that I haven't yet heard about) or construct a fairly well known solution. Or perhaps no one has ever solved the problem before but if a couple of people throw out some further questions and suggestions that will generate some new approaches.</p>
<p>I don't want to preclude any of these possibilities by asking too narrow a question ie. ask "is there a product which does X" and lose the build suggestions (or vice versa).</p>
<p>2) I'm new on this site. But I've been on StackOverflow for nearly three years and I've not seen general discussion questions damage the value of that site. Quite the opposite, if there's a danger to the StackExchange sites it's from fragmenting into too many narrow specialisms (half the time now I don't know which programming / sys-admin / unix related forum I should be asking a question on, with the result that I spend less time hanging around and <em>answering</em> questions on any of them). </p>
<p>3) I don't see that "brainstorm potential ways to do X" actually does match any of the five disallowed question types mentioned in the FAQ: </p>
<pre><code>* every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
* your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use ______ for ______, what do you use?”
* there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
* we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
* it is a rant disguised as a question: “______ sucks, am I right?”
</code></pre>
<p>Which one does it allegedly match?</p>
| 428 | 2011-03-07T14:57:48.293 | |discussion|asking-questions| | <p>Is it OK to ask questions that are really just requests to brainstorm with the community? </p>
<p>I'm referring to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/11128/brainstorm-on-wireless-buttons">this question</a>, which just came to the top of the main page. It caught my attention because it mentioned brainstorming explicitly, even in the title. However, this type of question has been very popular. Perhaps others are not as explicit, but they're often characterized by: </p>
<ol>
<li>The asker hasn't started the project yet.</li>
<li>The asker has little to no experience in the problem domain (case in point, RF communication and RFID technology), and doesn't know if a solution exists or not, how much it costs, or whether they're capable of implementing it.</li>
<li>The problem is often poorly defined.</li>
</ol>
<p>There are other examples (not by me) <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1270/electronics-kits-any-requests">here</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1705/looking-for-a-hardware-project-idea-that-actually-sells">here</a>, and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7685/making-a-plastic-card-that-looks-like-a-credit-card-with-a-long-range-module-insi">here</a>. </p>
<p>My take on the issue is that while a real brainstorming session can be full of bad ideas and people speaking what's on their mind, that's acceptable - Anything goes in a brainstorming session. It's kinda fun that way! However, for the same reason, I'm not sure such discussion belongs here. Also, real-life sessions usually are performed by people with a vested interest in the outcome. We're here to increase the amount of information available for electronics and robotics development, not to help people get ideas for projects.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask">This is already addressed in the FAQ</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You should only ask practical,
answerable questions based on actual
problems that you face. Chatty,
open-ended questions diminish the
usefulness of our site and push other
questions off the front page.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The list of bad subjective questions includes: </p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It also includes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If your motivation for asking the
question is “I would like to
participate in a discussion about
______”, then you should not be asking here.</p>
</blockquote>
| Brainstorming in the form of a question |
<p>OK, we made it so that the only inline math delimiter supported here is <code>\$</code> from the default of <code>$</code></p>
<p>(if you are wondering why we don't like the other "defaults" from MathJax such as <code>\(</code> and <code>\[</code> try typing them yourself in the answer box below to see why. Hint: Markdown.)</p>
<p>So now</p>
<blockquote>
<p><code>This is $20 and that is $30</code> </p>
<p>This is $20 and that is $30</p>
</blockquote>
<p>should be unaffected while</p>
<blockquote>
<p><code>This is \$20 and that is \$30</code> </p>
<p>This is \$20 and that is \$30</p>
</blockquote>
<p>should trigger inline math notation as before. </p>
| 440 | 2011-03-09T15:02:44.997 | |bug|status-completed|tex| | <p>The current LaTeX escapes of <code>$ ... $</code> need to be changed. </p>
<p>Several questions/answers have two dollar signs in the text somewhere. E&R has a number of questions with prices, and we usually use USD, represented by the <code>$</code> character, as the monetary unit. This has lead to a number of broken questions and comments with the new LaTeX syntax. </p>
<p>Here are some examples of questions, answers, and comments: </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/6228/is-there-an-inexpensive-way-to-get-started-with-gal-generic-array-logic-chips/6238#6238">Is there an inexpensive way to get started with GAL (Generic Array Logic) chips?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/2829/recommended-pcb-houses-assemblers/2836#2836">Recommended PCB houses / Assemblers</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4350/best-embedded-linux-board-for-a-battery-operated-device/4367#4367">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4350/best-embedded-linux-board-for-a-battery-operated-device/4367#4367</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4350/best-embedded-linux-board-for-a-battery-operated-device/4352#4352">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4350/best-embedded-linux-board-for-a-battery-operated-device/4352#4352</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/2641/cheapest-fpgas/3213#3213">Cheapest FPGAs?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/2641/cheapest-fpgas/2643#2643">Cheapest FPGAs?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8365/beginning-arm-cortex-ax-hardware-development">Beginning arm cortex Ax hardware development</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8365/beginning-arm-cortex-ax-hardware-development/8367#8367">Beginning arm cortex Ax hardware development</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/2388/custom-enclosures/2389#2389">Custom enclosures</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/6436/how-to-go-from-newbie-to-manufactured/6464#6464">How to go from newbie to manufactured?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/8807/how-to-estimate-the-cost-for-creating-a-device-for-test-purposes/8811#8811">How to estimate the cost for creating a device for test purposes</a></li>
<li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1990/how-much-does-it-cost-to-etch-your-own-pcbs/2018#2018">How much does it cost to etch your own PCBs?</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I just compiled this list by searching for the word "Costs" with the Stackexchange search box. There are almost certainly more.</p>
<p>MathJax can be configured to use other characters, like <code>$$...$$</code>, <code>\[...\]</code> and/or <code>\(...\)</code> as delimiters. In fact, the documentation goes so far as to recommend against using single dollar signs for delimiters: <a href="https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/tex.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/tex.html</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Note in particular that the <code>$...$</code> in-line delimiters are <strong>not</strong> used by default. That is because dollar signs appear too often in non-mathematical settings, which could cause some text to be treated as mathematics unexpectedly. For example, with single-dollar delimiters, ”... the cost is <code>$</code>2.50 for the first one, and <code>$</code>2.00 for each additional one ...” would cause the phrase “2.50 for the first one, and” to be treated as mathematics since it falls between dollar signs.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I understand that single dollar signs may be a good choice for some other stack exchange sites, where pricing is rarely if ever discussed. However, on E&R, the use of <code>$ ... $</code> is a bug.</p>
| TeX Delimiters should be changed |
<p>We have enabled MathJax on this meta. </p>
| 441 | 2011-03-09T15:19:21.887 | |bug|feature-request|status-completed|meta|tex| | <p>As seen in the recent <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/434/857">sandbox question</a>, TeX markdown isn't enabled on Meta. </p>
<p>It should be. It's needed for the sandbox, and we're likely to have questions on how to do something in TeX, TeX bug reports, TeX feature requests, and, after the feature is more familiar, questions which assume that TeX is enabled on Meta and try to use it. </p>
<p>I don't want to have to go over to Math.SE and try stuff on their meta (they have it enabled). I don't think they'd like that much... :)</p>
<p>Test: \$\LaTeX\$</p>
| TeX markdown needed on Meta |
<p>This was a small decoding issue when consuming data from the API (yes, we use the public API internally for things like this). It is fixed, but we cache that data for about an hour. It should work after that.</p>
| 460 | 2011-03-18T03:42:16.363 | |bug|status-completed|tex| | <p>What's this about? The question on the main site (that links to <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/434/test-the-new-latex-markdown-in-this-sandbox-question">Test the new LaTeX markdown in this Sandbox question!</a>) gives an error $\LaTeX$ ("Misplaced \"), but when meta links it, it works fine.</p>
<p>The error'ing TeX has a source of <code>\\LaTeX</code>, but the functional ones are just <code>\LaTeX</code>.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QIcTv.png" alt="enter image description here" /></p>
| $\LaTeX$ turning into $\\LaTeX$ in the meta titles on the main site |
<p>Looking at the number of up votes endolith's comments have got on <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/12217/2426">this question</a>, it seems to me that 50% of people think that shopping questions are on topic, and 50% think they're off topic.</p>
<p>So, as a compromise, why don't we agree to tag all non-localised shopping questions with a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/shopping" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'shopping'" rel="tag">shopping</a> tag, and anybody who thinks such questions should be off topic can add <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/shopping" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'shopping'" rel="tag">shopping</a> to their Ignored Tags list.</p>
| 475 | 2011-03-20T16:15:39.330 | |support|specific-question|closed-questions|shopping| | <p>Recently, one of my questions got closed by the moderator Kortuk. This is <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/11726/is-there-any-place-to-get-surface-mount-ir-leds/">the question</a></p>
<p>In summary, it's basically "where can I buy a certain kind of LED?" Kortuk closed this as "shopping advice does not belong here".</p>
<p>So here I am appealing to the meta community. Notably because many other <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=buy">questions like this</a> are open with votes. So am I wrong and those questions should also be closed? Or is there some kind of difference between my question and the ones that are open?</p>
<p>To be fair, I don't think my question was subjective. It had multiple answers or "ways to do something" but it was not really just "the only good answer is what I prefer". Basically, how does this question hurt the Electronics.SE community?</p>
<p>Also, I wasn't asking a question in the usual form of a shopping question "which IR LED is the best". Instead, my question was very specific, and should continue to be useful years from now, unless companies in the answers go out of business.</p>
| Questions about where to buy something is offtopic? |
<p>Good call, we'll fix that; this is a standard image across the network.</p>
<p><img src="http://sstatic.net/stackoverflow/img/life-instructions.png" alt=""></p>
| 484 | 2011-03-22T03:11:08.117 | |bug|status-completed|design| | <p>I am not sure if this is an artifact of the new design or something that has been around, but I just loaded a page with an image that didn't load:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/maUUW.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
| Missing Image on Unsubscribe Page |
<p>OK I fixed the close reason on main, and the title on meta. Thanks for the heads up.</p>
| 502 | 2011-03-28T12:19:21.283 | |bug|status-completed| | <p>I have noticed since the change(E&R to ED) that closing questions does not have the right statement that reflects the changes form E&R to electronics design. </p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/12144/runtime-error-in-visual-simulation-environment-microsoft-robotics-studio">Example</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Questions on Electronics and Robotics are expected to generally relate to Electronics and Robotics, within the scope defined in the faq.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Is the closing statement supposed to reflect the changes?</p>
| Closed question statment at the bottom of question is incorrect |
<p>Beta badges have been awarded - thanks for the catch.</p>
| 525 | 2011-03-31T21:16:20.680 | |support|status-completed|badges|beta| | <p>I just got a new badge, so I checked out the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/badges">Badges</a> page, and started looking at which badges I and other users have earned. </p>
<p>No one has earned the 'beta' badge: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/badges/16/beta">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/badges/16/beta</a></p>
<p>The requirements are: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Actively participated in the private beta. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I know that a lot of people, myself included, participated in this part of the site. Why does no one have the badge?</p>
| Why does no one have the 'beta' badge? |
<p>This is normal, due to caching on the server.</p>
| 529 | 2011-04-08T14:19:54.520 | |support|asking-questions| | <p>I am not sure if this is really a bug or not, but right after asking a question it shows up immediately on the home page (http://electronics.stackexchange.com/), but takes about a minute before it shows up on the questions tab (http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions).</p>
<p>Every time it happens to me my first thought is that maybe I didn't hit the button to ask the question.</p>
<p>Is this intentional?</p>
| Asking a question it doesn't show up right away under 'Questions'. |
<p>While Powerline-communication should deal with the high voltage/mains stuff (as there is IEEE 1901 Broadband over Powerline (BPL) and PLC/PLCC, pretty much the standardized name for Powerline Communications), the low voltage stuff could be Parasitic Power, like in 1-wire applications. Phantom Power could work too.</p>
| 535 | 2011-04-13T23:32:17.003 | |discussion|tags| | <p>Lots of people think it's better to have a single cable that carries both power and 2-way data to a device, rather than one cable for power and a second, separate cable for data.
Do we already have a tag for that -- perhaps "powerline"?
Should we make up a new tag -- perhaps "bias-tee" or "power+data" or "cable-reduction" or something else?</p>
<p>How should we tag questions related to that single-cable ideal?
I'm tempted to tag them all with the "powerline" tag,
but
the phrase "powerline communication" often refers to the very specific idea of running data through the same 2 wires in the walls of a house used for mains power ( <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/line-power">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/line-power</a> ).</p>
<p>I want a more general tag I can apply to systems where 2 wires carry combined data+power, where the power is supplied as DC power, or at least the power is much lower voltage than mains power.
Systems such as model trains ( <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/4508/dc-power-line-communications">DC power line communications</a> ), laser modulation (
<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/9325/i-need-to-design-a-bias-t-circuit-for-a-diode-laser-help-choosing-component-val">I need to design a Bias-T circuit for a diode laser - help choosing component values</a>
), coax cables that simultaneously carry power up to a pre-amp on the roof and TV signals from the pre-amp down to the TV
(mentioned in <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1654/injecting-a-communication-signal-over-dc-power-supply-lines">Injecting a communication signal over DC power supply lines</a> ), etc.
Perhaps a tag "bias-tee" would be adequate for those kinds of systems.</p>
<p>However, even "bias-tee" refers to the specific configuration of an inductor and a capacitor to combine and separate the power and data.
I suppose we could stretch it a bit and also apply it to things like analog telephone circuits that substitute a gyrator for the inductor.</p>
<p>I want an even more general tag I can use on questions about systems that may use techniques other than bias-tee to run power and data through the same cable -- such as the center-tapped transformer, used in <em>some</em> kinds of power-over-ethernet; or bundling 2 power conductors well-insulated from the 2 or more data conductors in the same cable, used in <em>other</em> kinds of power-over-ethernet.</p>
<p>That more general tag would be useful on questions such as "
<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/11728/safe-powering-methods-working-with-children">Safe Powering Methods - Working with Children</a> " --
where the original poster just wants to send power and data through the same cable, and is willing to consider all of the above ways of doing that.</p>
<p>How should we tag questions that deal with power and data through the same cable?</p>
| How should we tag questions that deal with power and data through the same cable? |
<p>I have changed the visited color to be lighter. this change will be in the next deployment.</p>
| 541 | 2011-04-14T15:56:30.970 | |feature-request|hyperlinks| | <blockquote>
<p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
<a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/499/contrast-of-hyperlinks">Contrast of hyperlinks</a> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We've already had <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/499/1240">this</a> question and it seems that the problem was solved, but I've noticed that that solution does not include comments. </p>
<p>In my opinion, links in comments should be changed to look like links in questions or answers.</p>
<p>UPDATE:</p>
<p>It seemed to be fixed, from this:
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XeuOO.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>But then I saw <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/14352/1240">this</a>:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/fMSi4.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>So in one place the comments are fixed and in another they aren't.</p>
| Link contrast in comments on main site needs to be fixed! |
<p>Every user has a Network Profile. They've put the graph there. </p>
<p>To see your graph, in your user page click on <a href="http://stackexchange.com/users/e509bf02-6c21-4bad-a298-74ba8a748762">Network Profile</a>. Then click the <a href="http://stackexchange.com/users/e509bf02-6c21-4bad-a298-74ba8a748762?tab=reputation">reputation tab</a></p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong></p>
<p>See the official annouce: <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-network-profiles/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/04/stack-exchange-network-profiles/</a></p>
| 544 | 2011-04-27T17:26:09.880 | |discussion|reputation| | <p>Awhile back the reputation used to be displayed by a line graph, not its a bar graph does the old reputation graph exist? Or has it been superseded? </p>
| What happened to the old reputation graph? |
<h2>The issue at hand</h2>
<p>This question is only peripheral to our scope. This example of a peripheral question happens to be about configuring an IDE, but you might find an analogy at the other end of the spectrum in physics questions - Knowing about, for example, what doping does to silicon isn't a core issue when designing electronics, but some users are probably curious, and others will know a little about it and could answer the question. However, we're not about semiconductor chemistry or quantum physics, we're about electronics design.</p>
<p>In this case, the asker needs to know about two problems:</p>
<ol>
<li>How to build a cross compiler.</li>
<li>How to configure an IDE for cross compilation.</li>
</ol>
<p>I'd welcome having those two questions on the site. However, we don't need a question for every permutation of host platform, target platform, and IDE. If our answers cover these two questions, and perhaps walks through the process for a specific grouping (which might be for AVR in XCode on a Mac), then I feel that we've diverted enough attention from electronics design for this problem area.</p>
<h2>General guidelines</h2>
<p>In general, if:</p>
<ul>
<li>An answer to your question helps you in some way to design electronics</li>
<li>It's likely that other members of this community would have experience in the problem area</li>
<li>A question in the same problem area hasn't already been asked</li>
</ul>
<p>... then I'd consider your question to be only partially within our scope. If it fails the last bullet point, read the related question and all of it's answers, and don't post your question if it's only a permutation of the other peripheral question. Since it's only partially within our scope, less attention should be devoted to it. </p>
<p>In contrast, a core issue, such as those listed in the FAQ:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>a specific electronics design problem</li>
<li>the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces </li>
<li>a communication scheme</li>
<li>the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>probably has at least one or more whole tag groupings devoted to it, and could have hundreds of questions and answers, and more would be welcome.</p>
<p>The goal, as always, is to make Electronics Design the best place on the web to get expert answers about designing electronics. For this to happen, we need to focus our attention on our core topics, and minimize investments in areas that don't contribute as much to this goal.</p>
<h2>tl;dr:</h2>
<p>When asking questions, if your question is only tangentially related to electronics design, avoid posting it (or ask on Meta or in Chat before posting it) if a similar question has already been asked and answered.<br>
When voting and closing, encourage good questions that are in our core areas by up-voting, improving, and answering even if they're similar (but not duplicating) questions that have already been asked. Discourage questions that are in peripheral areas by down-voting and/or closing if a similar (but not duplicating) question has already been asked.</p>
| 553 | 2011-05-03T16:20:34.897 | |discussion|closed-questions| | <p>A discussion came up in chat (the transcript begins <a href="http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/922439#922439">here</a>) that started about <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/13760/how-do-i-program-avrs-on-macos-x">this question</a>.</p>
<p>Some think it is on-topic, some think it is off-topic, some thing it is in the gray area. I think there are good arguments for all of them.</p>
<p>So what do you think? Is it on-topic, off-topic, questionable, too broad, too narrow, just right? And in a boarder sense how do we deal with questions like this have differing views on how good of a question it is for the site?</p>
| What should we do with questions that are fuzzy as to if they are within our scope? |
<p>Chiphacker was a Q&A site running the old Stack Exchange platform which was created and administered by <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/3/littlebirdceo">Marcus</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/21/mad-z">Maddy</a> of <a href="http://littlebirdelectronics.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">littlebirdelectronics.com</a> as an auxiliary support line for their Sparkfun-like, Sydney-based online electronics shop. It featured the much-loved Electropus (excellent image below found on the <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/chiphackers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">twitter</a> account). </p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cOMD1.png" alt="Electropus"></p>
<p>While Chiphacker had a fairly vibrant and healthy community (unlike its sister site/competitor <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/1256/857">Electronics Exchange</a>), it wasn't as successful as it could be, and other SE 1.0 sites were struggling. Stack Exchange Inc. opted to phase out SE 1.0 sites, and <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/area-51-we-come-in-peace/">started Area51</a>. </p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/rQYdu.png" alt="Area51 banner"></p>
<p>The Electronics and Robotics proposal on Area51 was created to replace Chiphacker: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This would be the SE 2.0 version of Chiphacker – Jared Harley Jun 3 [of 2010] at 2:55</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At one time, there were <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/55453/multiple-electronics-se-sites">three Electronics Stackexchange sites</a>! <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/247/857">This question</a> and <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/597/857">this question</a> are informative with respect to the migration. In the end, Chiphacker's content (both users and questions/answers) were migrated to the new site, while Electronics Exchange content was dropped.</p>
<p>The original name of the Area51 site was "Electronics and Robotics." After some discussion about creating a <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2582/robooverflow">robotics-only</a> <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/59408/146495">site</a>, discussion about allowing robotics on the site (for example, <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/370/857">here</a> and <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/156/lego-mindstorms-robotics-on-topic">here</a>), it was decided to <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/474/electronics-and-robotics-has-been-renamed-to-electronics">remove Robotics from the title and scope</a>. </p>
<p>This resulted in the name "Electronics", which was used during the beta period. However, this <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/149/857">caused great stress</a> about the potential for a flood of consumer electronics questions, and we launched as "Electronics Design".</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this caused us to <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/565/857">run afoul of someone's trademark</a>. Therefore, we were renamed to "Electronics Engineering", which is our current name. Of course, there are <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15/will-this-site-retain-the-chiphacker-name">other names that have been proposed</a>...The history isn't over yet! </p>
| 586 | 2011-05-18T12:24:38.973 | |discussion| | <p>New users probably knowing nothing about Chiphacker and the intent of this question is becoming a reference for them.</p>
<p>So, what is the history of the site Chiphacker?</p>
| What is Chiphacker? |
<p>Well, this gets messy. The site support questions related to electronic design(even though our name has changed again). However, if the question is from a consumer electronics perspective it will not fair well. This often becomes quickly apparent as when you as a question like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is it true that all else being equal
huge rechargeable batteries like ones
used in power tools and electric cars
have better lifetime compared to tiny
batteries like ones used in cell
phones?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first think I can tell you is that it depends on battery chemistry, which does not necessarily correlate with size, but with task, demands and budget. This is actually a very very broad question that does not have a great answer. This I would closed as "Not a real question" as the</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It's difficult to tell what is being
asked here. This question is
ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly
broad, or rhetorical and cannot be
reasonably answered in its current
form.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Question is a bit broad. We could also run into subjectivity as their are different ideas of size and there could quickly be arguments.</p>
<p>If someone asks a concise question about batteries it will stay open 99 times out of 100. The major thing to focus on would be technical problems.</p>
<p>We have had questions such as:</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/2675/230">How do I connect two identical batteries to increase the consumer lifetime?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/5666/230">Are coin cells a suitable replacement for AA batteries?</a></p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/2790/230">Small batteries for use in cold but not freezing environments.</a></p>
| 587 | 2011-05-19T09:59:46.070 | |support| | <p>It's quite usual to have general questions on batteries, for example:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is it true that all else being equal huge rechargeable batteries like ones used in power tools and electric cars have better lifetime compared to tiny batteries like ones used in cell phones?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Are such questions okay on the site?</p>
| Are general electric battery questions okay here? |
<p>According to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq">the FAQ</a>, this is the right place to ask questions about: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Some of the questions you've asked on physics (such as the <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/9386">Radiation of LC Circuits</a> question) would definitely be on topic here.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the Physics site has an active <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/electricity">[tag:electricity]</a> Q&A, and your questions seem to be well-received, so I think you need not feel any qualms about asking there, either.</p>
<p>If you conclude that that these questions are on-topic for both sites, then two questions logically follow: </p>
<ol>
<li><p><strong>When should you ask a question in this area on EE, when should you ask it on Physics, and when should you ask it on both?</strong><br>
There is a whole tag on MSO dedicated to this topic: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cross-posting">[tag:cross-posting]</a>. The general consensus is that it's OK to ask the question on multiple sites, but (1) don't ask the same question word-for-word, (2) be aware of the differences in the communities, and (3) give a question some time on a single site before cross-posting everywhere.<br>
You should also consider where you'll get the best answer to your question. If the EE community upvotes your question and answers it quickly, there's little reason to take it to physics, and we won't force you to do so.<br>
However, you may want to get the a certain angle (or multiple angles) in answers to a question. I won't bore you with the engineer-programmer-mathematician jokes that you've probably already heard, but we all approach a problem differently. You need to consider these perspectives when <em>asking</em> your question. It's unlikely that the same phraseology will be ideal on multiple sites.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>Should EE continue to consider these questions as on-topic?</strong><br>
This is a whole new topic in itself. You may want to open another Meta question about this. However, I'll discuss it's relation to this question briefly:<br>
There are a host of SE sites which cover overlapping topics. Examples include this set of questions on EE and Physics, and logical sets on Unix and Ubuntu, Webmasters/Webapps, Programmers and Stackoverflow, Mathematics and Computer Science, among others..</p></li>
</ol>
| 603 | 2011-05-23T23:14:04.327 | |discussion|electronics|website| | <p><a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/users/176/endolith">I've asked a bunch of questions</a> on physics.stackexchange.com that I feel fall more under physics than electronics, but I'm not getting very satisfying answers. Should I just have asked them here?</p>
| Should I ask physics of electricity questions here? |
<p>Yes, it is a duplicate for two reasons: </p>
<ol>
<li>The topics are the same; all their on-topic sample questions are on topic here.</li>
<li>We want their expert users and questions!</li>
</ol>
<p>We're called Electrical Engineering, but there has been <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/565/announcement-site-title-change/566#566">significant support</a> for a proposal to call our site Electronics Engineering or Electronics and Electrical Engineering. The <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/18854/electronics-electrical-engineering#comment-22558">commentary on the proposal</a> supports that discussion.</p>
<p>We are derived from Chiphacker, which was started by a company which produced products for electronics hobbyists. At the time of migration, there were about 1,000 questions and many users which were hobbyist oriented. Sure, some users were engineers, and some questions and answers were at an expert level, but the majority was beginner stuff. It was pretty much the opposite of the situation advocated by <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77334/commitment-message-should-ask-if-youre-an-expert">this MSO proposal</a>, and they never had to answer the "Primary Role/Interest" query which <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77334/commitment-message-should-ask-if-youre-an-expert/77395#77395">Cartaino implemented</a>. I'd love to see the result if this survey was put to even a subset of our current users. Additionally, we get a huge flood of software people from Stack Overflow who are curious beginners (see, for example, the Netduino questions...), and the few experts we have are quickly drowned out. There's nothing wrong with hobbyists or SO users except they don't ask expert questions.</p>
<p>We've struggled for a while with the issue of non-expert questions (<a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/332/when-do-we-launch-and-what-happens-then-what-needs-to-happen-before-we-launch">here</a>, <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/170/google-and-the-lowest-common-denominator">here</a>, in the design discussions, also other comment threads/chat discussions), but we've not been united enough to implement the policies that would make this site an expert-level place, even though some members have a bent in that direction. (Relevant <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/area-51-asking-the-first-questions/">blog post</a> and <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/02/are-you-an-expert.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">codinghorror post</a>) </p>
<p>Some sites (Math, Theoretical CS, and Physics come to mind) segment themselves as being designed for experts, professionals, and academics only. If this site continues, it would need to segregate itself as a site for professionals and this site would have to accept a hobbyist bent. I'm not sure I'm willing to accept that. The community will have to decide.</p>
| 605 | 2011-05-24T23:04:37.247 | |discussion|scope| | <p>The Area 51 proposal <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/18854/electronics-electrical-engineering">Electronics & Electrical Engineering</a> (nine months old) was recently flagged as a duplicate of this site.</p>
<p>While I've looked at your FAQ, I don't know the field well enough to be comfortable making the call on my own—which brings me here.</p>
<p>Can y'all review that proposal, and give your opinion here as to whether <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/18854?tab=ontopic&phase=definition#tab-top">their on-topic questions</a> would all be welcome on <em>this</em> site?</p>
| Does the Area 51 proposal "Electronics & Electrical Engineering" duplicate this site? |
<p>Forgettaboutit. So the units ends up on the next line after the value just like other words do, big deal. Why must the value and its units not be allowed to flow when it's fine for other words that belong together to flow? It's OK to break "five feet" or "six volts" but not "6 V"? That makes no sense. Once you've decided that there should be a space between the value and its units, I think you have given up the right to insist they be on the same line.</p>
<p>Of course this only applies to text that is obviously flowed. Tables and other things with fixed formatting is a differnt story, but I don't think that is what is being asked about here anyway.</p>
| 620 | 2011-06-10T19:30:38.173 | |support|formatting| | <p>when typesetting numbers and units, my preferred way is to have a space between them for better readability. For instance, one would typeset</p>
<p>24 V</p>
<p>instead of</p>
<p>24V</p>
<p>It is actually not only my preferred way of writing because it just reads easier, it is also the way recommended by standards like the <a href="http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec07.html" rel="nofollow">US NIST</a> or German DIN.</p>
<p>My only problem is that a line break between the number and the value would cremate all the good things about the whole thing. I've searched some, and found that the <strong><em>nobr</em></strong> html command is actually dirty style (and not supported by SE anyway). Also, when just wanting to write something simple like 24 V, using the LaTeX markdown \$\text{ 5 V}\$ seems a bit too much.</p>
<p>Thus, my question: <em>What is the best way of using a blank character and preventing a line break at the same time?</em></p>
| Preventing line breaks before physical units |
<p>You hit the daily reputation cap - in every 24-hour period, the system will allow you to gain at most 200 reputation points from up-votes. For various obscure accounting reasons, you were 2 points shy of 200 when that vote was cast, hence it gave you +2 instead of the normal +10. You also got +0 for several up-votes following that... </p>
<p>If you check <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/2064/stevenvh?tab=reputation">your reputation page</a>, you'll see a break-out of all these votes (you can also check your <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/reputation">rep audit page</a> for a more detailed run-down of how your reputation is calculated and capped).</p>
| 626 | 2011-06-20T17:59:06.047 | |support|reputation| | <p>I'm shocked :-)<br>
While an upvote for an answer usually is awarded with 10 points, for one answer I only got +2. Why is that? </p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/y965l.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
| Why do I get only +2 for an upvote? |
<p>You can now see if a flag was invalid or not (though not which moderator dealt with the flag). We'll continue improving the interface on that screen to clean things up a bit this week.</p>
| 636 | 2011-06-24T14:52:30.347 | |bug|feature-request|status-completed| | <p>I am not sure if this is a bug, me not knowing where to look, or a feature request.</p>
<p>I know I can see all of my flags and see how many are valid versus invalid, but I have not been able to find any way to determine which are which.</p>
<p>It would sure be nice from a learning perspective to know what was considered invalid.</p>
| Seeing what flags are marked as invalid. |
<p>This is correct; the ability to view (and act on) deleted questions and answers is a privilege earned at 10k reputation:</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/privileges/moderator-tools</a></p>
| 639 | 2011-06-26T09:23:05.137 | |discussion| | <p>I'm used to be able to see my own deleted answers, and it makes sense: this way I can undelete them if I want. But I also can see others' deleted answers. Is this on purpose?</p>
| Deleted answer visible |
<p>This is a test.<br></p>
<p><p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/J3rwQ.jpg" alt=""></p>
<p>I got this image uploaded to imgur by using the ctrl-g method Kevin mentioned. Thanks Kevin, it seems to work. One minor wrinkle though. When I hit ctrl-g I got this little window that had a text line in it that said something like "pathname on your computer". However, I couldn't type there, no characters showed up. I had to click BROWSE, then enter the pathname in the window that popped from that. Not a big deal, but it doesn't make sense that the first text line is there if it can't be used.</p>
<p>It's interesting to note that the HTML CENTER tag apparently doesn't work here. I enclosed the image reference in CENTER tags, but it sill shows up left aligned, at least in the preview window. Again, not a big deal.</p>
<p>This is centered text.</p>
<p>Nope, that doesn't work either. Oh well.</p>
| 641 | 2011-06-26T14:23:10.810 | |support| | <p>Let's say I'm answering a question and want to include a small schematic image in-line with the answer.</p>
<p>First, the documentation for the post editor markup language is well hidden. When I actually had this problem, I looked all around the window and found no "edit help" link or anything like it. I found something like it later when editing one of my posts, but that seems to be hit or miss. For example, right now after scrolling down the browser window there is a box "Similar Questions" where the other time there was a box with links to editing help. Right now I see no way to access editing help from this page.</p>
<p>Anyway, apparently "!", followed by desription in brackets, followed by a link in parenthesis makes the content of the linked image appear in line. However, that is still linking to the image in the temp directory on my server. I'm not going to keep it there for more than a few days. How do I get the forum server to make a copy and then tell me the link to that copy so that the embedded image remains in the post after I delete the temporary copy on my server?</p>
<p>Also, where is this documented? I'd like to RTFM, but all I've found is <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help</a>, which doesn't say anything about copying references to the forum server.</p>
| How to get embedded images saved on server? |
<p>Jeff's answer covers the tools the engines give us fairly well. Here's how to use them:</p>
<p>Just flag the posts as spam, and downvote. </p>
<p>If enough users flag as spam ('enough' == 5 for now), a temporary block happens automatically. There were 7 flags across the three answers and user account itself when I logged in a couple hours after it happened. When a mod logs in, of course, we can take immediate and permanent action.</p>
<p>In this case, I don't think we need to bother blacklisting. This was the first time I've ever seen spam for this particular site. If a new account is created to spam the same site, we'll put it on a blacklist. </p>
| 645 | 2011-06-27T07:44:01.607 | |discussion|spamming| | <p>Recently a new user's account had to be deleted after he spammed the site three times in a few minutes. Do we have measures to avoid that he creates a new account and repeats this? Like for instance a blacklist of sites you can't link to in questions or answer? </p>
<p><em>edit</em><br>
I just realized that blacklisting the complete site may give problems with sites like <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.tinyurl.com</a>.</p>
| How do we avoid spam recidivism? |
<p>If it is a great part of the answer it should be edited into the answer. This site is not like a forum, sometimes comments can be productive, but they should not answer the question, it should be in the answer.</p>
| 651 | 2011-06-29T11:27:26.777 | |discussion| | <p>I agree that comments often are just chat, but at times they offer valuable additions to an answer. Yet they don't seem to be included in text search indexing. Why not?</p>
| Why aren't comments included in indexing? |
<p>This issue has been brought up in various forms a decent amount on meta.StackOverflow and probably wont change by a question here. See the meta post "<a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25404/why-does-stack-overflow-allow-duplicate-display-names">Why does Stack Overflow allow duplicate display names?</a>"</p>
<p>Basically it looks like they want it to be "Real Life" and also to not favor users who have been around longer. At least that is what the answers to that post say and they were never rebutted.</p>
| 654 | 2011-07-01T12:06:44.320 | |discussion|user-accounts| | <p>Apparently user names don't have to be unique, see the comments to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16216/how-do-i-read-a-datasheet-for-a-solid-state-relay/16221#16221">this answer</a>. Was this a good idea? In the comments I mentioned it's only clear which Mark is which because one is the OP and hence has his name formatted differently. In other situations it may be harder to tell them apart.<br>
Shouldn't we for future registrations stick to unique user names?</p>
| Unique user names? |
<p>@lerting the post owner in a comment is not necessary. If comments are only between you and the post-owner, and nobody else is commenting, then an @lert to the post owner at the beginning of a comment will be removed.</p>
<p>You can only notify one person in a comment. So in your example, you'd be notifying the post owner, except that the post owner is always notified of a comment on one of their posts without being named in it. Matt and vicatcu would not receive a notification. By removing the post owner from the beginning of a comment, we're freeing up a notification slot to Matt. Note that vicatcu still will not be notified.</p>
| 657 | 2011-07-01T13:18:56.560 | |bug|status-bydesign| | <p>In <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16240/is-my-sparkfun-rs232-shifter-smd-faulty">this question</a> I was trying to write this comment:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>@RichardFreedman @MattJenkins @vicatcu
please check my edit to the question
and see if I have understood
correctly. Thanks!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No matter how many times I tried to edit or repost it always removes "@RichardFreedman". Why is it doing this? Does it have something to do with him being the OP?</p>
| @Names disappearing in Comments, Why? |
<p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/61713/comment-reply-name-with-space">This Meta Post</a> explains how the @lerting works in detail.</p>
| 661 | 2011-07-02T05:56:25.250 | |support| | <p>In answers, when people refer to other users they put a "@" before the username, like "@someuser said this and that". What's the function of the "@"? Is it to make clear to the reader that it's a username? Or for a script so that it can convert it to a link to the user's profile (future enhancement)? In that case, what about duplicate names? </p>
<p>Do I have to use the "@"? If so, do I have to concatenate names with spaces in them: @FedericoRusso?</p>
| What is this "@" before usernames? |
<p>This problem has been reported before, for example <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63644/pressing-enter-in-comment-box-unexpectedly-submits-form">here on meta.stackoverflow</a>. Please don't respond like <a href="https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1289/threatening-emails-from-jeff-atwood">this</a>; instead, if it really bothers you, then add <a href="https://stackapps.com/questions/2061/disable-enter-for-submitting-comments">this script to your browser</a>.</p>
<p>Comments are designed to be more like a chat session: The <kbd>Enter</kbd> key submits the comment. If you've never used a chat client, this may take some getting used to, but now you know.</p>
<p>There is no way to insert a permanent line break (temporary ones entered with <kbd>Shift</kbd>-<kbd>enter</kbd> are stripped before submission), so the use of the <kbd>Enter</kbd> key for this purpose isn't usually a problem. All multi-line fields on the site automatically word-wrap, so you don't need to terminate your lines yourself to 80 characters.</p>
<p>If you make a mistake, you can edit your comment up to three times. Hover over it to get the edit button shown below:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qvVNy.png" alt="picture of comment with edit button" /></p>
<p>Jeff explained the behavior on SO <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/459/should-we-be-allowed-to-edit-comments/33939#33939">here</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can now edit your own comments after you post them, within a 5 minute window.</p>
<p>How do you know a comment has been edited? A little pencil icon will appear next to it. The mouseover title tooltip explains what this pencil icon means, and also provides a count of how many times the comment was edited in that 5 minute window.</p>
<p>Moderators can edit any comments at any time. This action is logged and visible in that moderator's user history to other moderators.</p>
</blockquote>
| 675 | 2011-07-07T20:51:54.247 | |support| | <p>Maybe this is a dumb question, but I keep accidentally posting answers or comments by hitting the Enter key to insert a paragraph break. I'm finding myself writing text in an external editor and pasting to prevent this problem. Is there a description of the text editor behavior somewhere so I can learn how it works? I'm using Firefox 5.0 if it matters.</p>
| "Enter" key behavior |
<p>First off, I don't care for these sorts of questions. They don't fit the Q&A model <em>at all well</em>, and if not handled carefully can balloon into an unreadable mess of everyone's Favorite Things.</p>
<p>That said, there <em>is</em> precedent for them. But it is <em>not</em>, as JGord suggests, <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/215548/whats-the-hardest-or-most-misunderstood-aspect-of-linq">questions like this</a>. Have a look at the accepted, top-voted answer there: even if you don't understand what it means - heck <em>especially</em> if you don't understand what it means - there's little mistaking the uselessness of it to someone looking to learn more about the topic.</p>
<p>The closest questions on Stack Overflow are probably the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hidden-features?sort=votes">hidden features questions</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What are the lesser-known but useful features of the Python programming language?</p>
<ul>
<li>Try to limit answers to Python core.</li>
<li>One feature per answer.</li>
<li>Give an example and short description of the feature, not just a link to documentation.</li>
<li>Label the feature using a title as the first line.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>These are among the most popular questions on the site, and house a <em>wealth</em> of uncommon knowledge on their respected topics. A reader of intermediate skill could do worse than spend a few hours reading through these answers...</p>
<p>They're also almost always a mess. Answers describing stuff <em>everyone</em> knows about, answers that don't answer the question at all, answers fail to be detailed enough to be useful... If you're gonna recommend reading something like this to someone, it pretty much has to come with the caveat, "But look, feel free to stop reading once you get past page two..." - folks with stuff to do don't have time to wade through that much cruft. And moderators rarely relish the task of stepping in to clean it up.</p>
<p>So... useful, but <em>dangerous</em>! It's wise to have some guidelines to follow... Questions attempting to fit this model would do well to,</p>
<ul>
<li><p><strong>Avoid broad questions when multiple specific questions will do</strong></p>
<p>This is the most important. If you end up collecting answers to a whole bunch of specific questions that folks will actually end up searching for, you're shooting yourself in your collective feet by smashing them all together under one banner. FAQs are always entising to the experienced, because they save time explaining things to the kids for the umpteenth time... But <em>this whole site</em> should be a FAQ! If the question title looks suspiciously like a description of <em>the site itself</em>, then advise the author to simply ask a bunch of questions instead of trying to get the site to write a book for him.</p>
</li>
<li><p><strong>Use Community Wiki</strong></p>
<p>CW is rarely necessary or even useful these days, when everyone can suggest an edit pretty much anything. But for questions intended to collect large numbers of comprehensive answers that <em>should</em> be familiar to most expert readers, it's worth using simply to encourage contributors to improve existing answers over posting new ones. Better to upvote and edit an existing answer than force two similar ones to compete. Note that a moderator will have to enable this on the question, providing an excellent opportunity to vet the topic and ensure the rest of the guidelines are followed.</p>
</li>
<li><p><strong>One suggestion per answer</strong></p>
<p>With CW in place, voting becomes nothing more than a means to ensure the most useful tips float to the top. This falls apart if writers start throwing multiple tips together (note that writing a comprehensive answer is normally <em>a very good thing indeed</em> - but as I said, these questions don't really fit the normal Q&A model).</p>
</li>
<li><p><strong>Encourage lengthy explanations of why, backed up by experiences and external references</strong></p>
<p>One of the worst fates that can befall such questions are the proliferation of empty opinions. Experienced readers will tend to have some strongly-held opinions on any given topic, and love to up-vote them... even when the rationale that drives them isn't necessarily obvious to less experienced readers. Discouraging these in favor of answers that explain <em>why</em> is probably the single biggest motivation behind <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/">The Six Subjective Guidelines</a>. Referencing these in the question itself isn't a terrible idea...</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I realize this is a fairly negative answer. I've seen too many instances where these questions have been asked and devolved into noise to be overly positive, I'm afraid. But <strong>you</strong> <em>should</em> be - take heart that you have a community willing to share its "tricks of the trade" with less experienced users! Make the most of the opportunity, and you'll all benefit...</p>
| 686 | 2011-07-11T19:14:26.203 | |discussion|close-reasons|subjective| | <p>There's a question on the front page:</p>
<h1><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16630/neat-electrical-tricks#question">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16630/neat-electrical-tricks#question</a></h1>
<blockquote>
<p>I'm looking for any neat tricks/hacks you have come across in your careers.</p>
<p>I can think of two offhand:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A digital multimeter in continuity test mode can be used to check an LED.</p>
</li>
<li><p>An LED can act as both a source of light and a detector of light. With proper amplification circuitry an LED can be used as a photodiode.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>which I believe doesn't belong. However, it has three upvotes, three answers, a lot of activity, and users are clamoring for community wiki status.</p>
<p>I think it's obvious that the question violates the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask">Don't Ask section of the FAQ</a> and fits the "bad subjective" category as laid out in the <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/">blog post on subjective questions</a>. See also the recent <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/681/is-there-a-place-for-opinion-on-the-electronics-stackexchange">Is there a place for opinion on the electronics.stackexchange?</a> question.</p>
<p>Normally, I'd close this as "Not Constructive":</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This question is not a good fit to our Q&A format. We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>but I'm hesitant because there's so much community support.</p>
<p>The above guidelines are neither written in stone nor able to be derived from basic principles, but they're constant across all SE sites and seem to work pretty well.</p>
<p>I have two questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Why is this question getting so much community support?</li>
<li>Why (or why not) should this question be exempt from the above guidelines?</li>
</ol>
| Does 'Neat Electrical Tricks' belong on our site? |
<p>This sounds more like home improvements to me TBH.</p>
| 688 | 2011-07-11T22:49:32.720 | |discussion|on-topic| | <p>We have a <a href="https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12166/electric-wires">question on physics.SE</a> that is off topic there. It deals with electrical wiring, which from what I've heard is not necessarily considered electrical engineering, but I wanted to check whether such things fall under the scope of this site. If the question would be appropriate here I'd like to migrate it.</p>
| Would this wiring question be appropriate on EE.SE? |
<p>I wouldn't want this to change. I like to keep various windows in specific places on the screen, and it's annoying when I click on a link and a new browswer pops up in some random location. Please, let's not have this site be like too many other obnoxios sites and pollute my screen with extra windows.</p>
| 703 | 2011-07-13T15:53:34.757 | |feature-request| | <p>I keep finding myself forgetting to open links in a new tab and losing track of where the question I was reading is at.</p>
<p>I don't see any cases that someone would be reading a question and not want a link in the question to open in a new window or tab. So would it be possible to just make this the default?</p>
<p><strong>Edit</strong></p>
<p>Since it looks like the answer is just going to be <em>no</em> I am going to add on some additional comments that I would like some clarification on.</p>
<p>Some of the prior reasoning for not wanting this feature have been:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I expect my programs to leave me in control. Please stop trying to
mess that up</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The website should not open new windows. As already mentioned, you can
do it yourself when you want.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And many more along the same lines. This is great and all, but if this is the true reasoning, why does chat open links in a new tab?</p>
<p>It would make me feel much better if I could at least get a consistent reasoning.</p>
| Would it be possible to have links in a question open in a new tab? |
<p>I wouldn't have given it special thought but since you're asking: I don't think it belongs here. It's about electricity, like home wiring, not about electronics, and especially not about electronic design. This isn't useful for any DIY-er, nor for a professional electronic designer. Maybe you should have mentioned a transistor in the question :-)</p>
| 711 | 2011-07-15T08:00:51.263 | |support| | <p>Today I saw a 10 kilovolt cable being dug under ground and I have detailed questions.</p>
<p>For example, I saw the cable mark and googled it and found that the cable features a copper wires shielding - I'd like to know what's the reason to have copper wires shielding in a 10 KV power cable.</p>
<p>Also I saw that the cable was only one wire, so it takes three such cables running together to have a 3-phase power line - three cables will not be extremely parallel, they will follow slightly different paths and so will have slightly different lengths and slightly different resistance. I'd like to know is these cables having slightly different resistance have any impact on power transmission.</p>
<p>Are such questions okay on this site?</p>
| Are question about power transmission okay? |
<p><em>I started this as a comment to Jeff's answer, but it became a bit long.. :-)</em></p>
<p>Probably just me, but I don't understand the need for the synonyms. If somebody starts typing <code>swĭ</code> she'll see <code>switch</code> and <code>switches</code> as suggestions. And instead of just having one clear tag for it, some people will choose <code>switch</code> and others <code>switches</code>. Can't we (automagically) edit the least preferred to the preferred one, so that we keep the number of tags under control? At least a warning about a deprecated tag would be nice.<br>
I'm also thinking about the other question on tags where the example of <code>D-class</code> and <code>class-D</code> is given. Ideally it should be impossible to create one of them.</p>
| 733 | 2011-07-18T19:28:32.243 | |support|tags| | <p>Under the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags?tab=popular">tags tab</a> there are tags such as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/switches" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'switches'" rel="tag">switches</a> that shows up but is a synonym of <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/switch" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'switch'" rel="tag">switch</a>. Are we supposed to be seeing both there? It seems to make it a little difficult to navigate tags.</p>
| Are we supposed to be seeing tags that have been merged/synonym with other tags? |
<p>I find it bizarre that a serious question that involves mains power, resistive heating (and the removing thereof) and driving a fan is considered as not suited to this forum.</p>
| 741 | 2011-07-24T00:21:09.560 | |discussion|asking-questions| | <p>I am not sure if this is the right forum for my question, but I am unclear what the FAQ means by </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it is not about</p>
<p>...
consumer electronics such as media players, cell phones or smart
phones, except when designing these products or hacking their
electronics for other uses...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here is my problem:</p>
<p>I opened up a hair drier because I wanted to remove the heating element, and I have some specific questions about which wires are doing what and how I can re-connect the right ones after removing the heating element.</p>
<p>I am not sure if this qualifies as 'hacking'.</p>
<p>Is such a question appropriate here? </p>
| is it appropriate to ask about how to 'hack' a hair drier by removing the heating coil here? |
<p>Yes, that could be better. My suggestion for an accepted answer: fill the circle with the olive green, and make the checkmark in it white.</p>
| 743 | 2011-07-24T17:55:42.407 | |feature-request|design| | <p>I just accepted an answer to a question, but I couldn't tell that the check mark had changed. </p>
<p>Looking at them side-by-side, it is easier to tell the difference, e.g.:</p>
<p>Unselected</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IyfzR.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>Selected</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ngXxJ.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>But I could not tell that it was changing when I was toggling it. I thought that I might be imagining things until I saw that I had gained +2 for selecting an answer.</p>
<p>I have never had such doubt when using other SE sites. It might be helpful to other new users so I think that it is worth considering this change.</p>
| Should it be easier to tell that the 'accept answer' button has been toggled? |
<h2>TL:DR;</h2>
<p>I understand <code>TL:DR;</code> as a synonym for "summary", and, if it's interpreted that way, it's probably OK.</p>
<hr>
<h2>The long version:</h2>
<p>I understand your sentiments, but don't think we need to ban <code>TL:DR;</code>. I have never used it the way a literal reading would suggest, and I'm not sure it's ever actually used that way. </p>
<p>In fact, I'm <em>more</em> likely to read a long piece of prose if there's a <code>TL:DR;</code> at the top explaining what I should expect to find. It helps my comprehension by allowing my brain to focus on the content instead of always trying to figure out the main point.</p>
<p>In any case, it's good to provide the information contained in a <code>TL:DR;</code>, whether it's called an abstract, big picture, conclusion, executive summary, introduction, outline, overview, summary, synopsis, table of contents, or <code>TL:DR;</code>. If you think it's unprofessional or used in a literal sense, it's the first thing in that list that I'd be inclined to discourage. </p>
<p>If you feel compelled to edit a post to change <code>TL:DR;</code> to Summary (or something to that effect), please make sure to check the rest of the post - Posts long enough to require abbreviation are likely to need more than one edit.</p>
| 749 | 2011-07-25T14:15:03.023 | |discussion| | <p>I have seen the use of <code>tl:dr;</code> a fair amount around here. Since the literal meaning of it is "Too Long; Didn't Read" I feel like it goes against the general attitude that we want on this community.</p>
<p>If the post really was too long, then why not post a comment saying the question is hard to follow because of how long it is and ask for it to be shortened and to the point.</p>
<p>I know <code>tl:dr;</code> has also been used to say "What I am about to post is long" but even in that case I don't think we should be fostering the use of short hand that the general public wouldn't know.</p>
<p>I am just one person though and would like to know what others think of it.</p>
| Thoughts on the use of tl:dr; |
<p>I have updated the description and it will show up after our next deploy.</p>
| 754 | 2011-07-28T14:05:02.807 | |feature-request|status-completed|closed-questions| | <p>The text which appears after closing a question reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>closed</strong> as off topic by User1, User2, Mod♦ Date at time</p>
<p>Questions on Electrical Engineering - Stack Exchange are expected to generally relate to electronics, within the scope defined in the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/faq">faq</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The FAQ, I think, is good, but this text is bad. When closing a consumer electronics question, the "generally relate to electronics" clause doesn't make sense.</p>
<p>Could we change this to "generally relate to electronics design"?</p>
| Should the off topic close text be changed? |
<p>That's because the answer is from the question owner.</p>
<p>Self-accepts do not dock to the top of the question, but rather follow the normal answer logic. Since this has 2 upvotes currently, that means it'll sort randomly among the other answers with 2 upvotes on the question.</p>
| 758 | 2011-07-29T15:57:24.010 | |bug|status-bydesign| | <p>On <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/5413/power-up-initialization-of-hd44780-lcd-module">this question</a> the accepted answer isn't always ranked first; sometimes it's preceded by another answer with same number of upvotes. It doesn't always happen, just like for other answers with the same number of upvotes their order changes randomly.<br>
I haven't seen this behavior before.</p>
| Accepted answer not ranked first |
<p>Olin's mention of "the self-evident logic of how to ask a question" suggests that, while he may have great experience in Electrical Engineering, he has little to no experience asking questions on a forum. (I assume one is due to the other)</p>
<p>I do have a lot of experience asking questions on many forums, and I have seen all kinds of answers to all kinds of questions. The one thing I have learned is that there is no correct way to ask a question, and it can be hard to predict the sort of response you'll get. I have asked quick one-liners, and been rewarded with great answers, bad answers, answers to different questions, arguments, and suspensions. I have also asked in-depth questions, which carefully lay out what I know, what I assume, what I don't know, and what the question is, and been rewarded with the great answers, bad answers, answers to different questions, arguments, and suspensions.</p>
<p>Isaac Newton, no Mr. Thickie himself is claimed to have said: "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."</p>
<p>Let's try to re-word Olin's quote:</p>
<p>"The self-evident logic of how 45 people will each read the question in a different way, from a different perspective, and react emotionally to it." </p>
<p>We can see that the words "self-evident logic" have no place here. </p>
<p>To see why it is pointless to punish questioners who apparently don't follow the "self-evident logic", let's look at something else with self-evident logic, software. There is really no good excuse for writing an incorrect algorithm. The logic is quite evident, yet I'm sure all of us has written a laughably incorrect algorithm and wondered for ages why it doesn't work.</p>
<p>Now, imagine that whenever this happens, some self-important busybody who has never written any software comes along, scolds you, and deletes your code. This is essentially what happens when someone closes a question.</p>
<hr>
<p>In my humble opinion, closing a question should be a last resort, and should only happen when we're sure all other avenues have failed. If I could make one change to the Stackexchange sites, it would be this:</p>
<p>Before a question is closed, there should be a purgatory period where the community helps the questioner improve the question. Currently this period is not explicitly implemented, instead there's a period where the community shouts at the questioner and tries to make them feel bad about their failure.</p>
<p>A couple of ways this could be implemented are:</p>
<ul>
<li>When someone downvotes a question, they are required to give a reason. There could be a few common reasons to click on, and a text box to write your own.</li>
<li>When someone votes to close a question, they should give specific reasons, and should also say what changes should be made to the question for the close vote to be removed.</li>
</ul>
<p>The question would be labelled as [needs improving], and the questioner should have a few days in which to make the changes before it's finally closed.</p>
<hr>
<p>Don't think "bad question - close it", think "unfinished question - fix it".</p>
| 770 | 2011-08-08T10:27:15.123 | |discussion| | <p>Why are we so strict with closing questions, can't we just leave them open? It seems like it would be a lot better if we worked with the person asking the question to improve it. On PICList people can either just ignore the question or help to improve it, why don't we just take this policy instead of closing questions?</p>
<hr>
<p>Note: I am not asking this question for myself, rather I am playing the devils advocate in order to create some discussion that we can reference in the future. The question was spurred on by comments in this question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/17909/how-can-i-use-a-transistor-with-two-circuits">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/17909/how-can-i-use-a-transistor-with-two-circuits</a></p>
| Why are we so strict with closing questions, can't we just keep them open? |
<p>I think this is really a judgment call; options 1 or 2 are both valid depending on the circumstances.</p>
<p>If you strongly feel option 1 is the best fit, go for that.</p>
| 776 | 2011-08-10T19:21:35.537 | |discussion|editing| | <p>Sometimes, there's a question that almost answers one that you have. Perhaps the title is similar, or the other question specifically excludes a point that you're interested in. </p>
<p>For an example case, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/12480/whats-the-difference-between-npn-and-pnp-transistors">this old question</a>, about PNP transistors, has an answer about their operation accepted without comment. It doesn't mention the physics behind the behavior, but Federico wants to know this information.</p>
<p>What should be done here? There are a few options: </p>
<ol>
<li>Ask your question, explaining the differences between yours and the [preferably linked] pre-existing question.</li>
<li>Edit the previous question to include yours.</li>
<li>Ask the poster of the previous question whether they'd like to include your topic, and take option 1 or 2 based on the result of this communication. Note that this may take some time (or never happen) if the OP doesn't visit regularly.</li>
</ol>
<p>My opinion is currently quite firmly fixed on option 1, but I'd be interested to hear arguments from all sides.</p>
| Expanding a question's scope vs. Starting a new question |
<p>I prefer 2: the original publisher. They're inherently the most up-to-date, and component manufacturers have more reasons not to let their links rot than some uninvolved third party like <a href="http://www.alldatasheet.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.alldatasheet.com</a>.<br>
If I notice one I change a link to a copy on a personal page to the manufacturer's. </p>
<p>I don't agree that manufacturers change their website structure often. It's not my experience anyway, and it would be bad PR-wise: customers want consistency from their suppliers. And <em>if</em> the original link isn't valid anymore you're often automagically redirected to the new page.</p>
| 778 | 2011-08-10T20:48:07.897 | |discussion|uploading-images| | <h2>On the Image Uploader:</h2>
<p>It's common knowledge that we have an image uploader (see the <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4376/please-allow-image-uploads-directly-onto-the-site">original request</a>, the <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75491/how-to-upload-an-image-to-a-post/75498#75498">community FAQ</a>, and the <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/new-image-upload-support/">blog post</a>). When someone uploads an image to another location and links to it, it's often edited to use the image uploader, and when an externally hosted image goes down, we parrot something like the following excerpt from that FAQ entry: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whenever possible, use the Stack Exchange provided hosting as described below. This uses an imgur.com Pro account, which ensures images are never lost. Images on free Imgur accounts, and on many other free image hosters, will expire if not requested every now and then! Your post is useful for future visitors too, right?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was initial resistance, but the utility for sites like ui.stackexchange.com and photography.stackexchange.com is undeniable. The image uploader caught on and now no one protests.</p>
<h2>The Discussion:</h2>
<p>Electronics.stackexchange.com has few links to external images anymore, but we have a huge number of links to PDFs. Datasheets, appnotes, and whitepapers are crucial to many answers. Currently, we link to the manufacturer's page, to compilation sites like <a href="http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">datasheetcatalog.com</a>, and sometimes to PDFs hosted on distributor websites. </p>
<p>Where should we keep these PDFs? Options include: </p>
<ol>
<li>It's fine the way it is; just link to the original location. The links don't rot fast enough for this to be a problem.</li>
<li>All PDF links should point to the original publisher's source. No datasheetcatalog.com, digikey.com, sparkfun.com, etc. etc. etc. links.</li>
<li><p>All PDF links should point to (pick one): </p>
<ul>
<li>alldatasheet.com</li>
<li>datasheetcatalog.com</li>
<li>datasheetarchive.com</li>
<li>datasheetlocator.com</li>
<li>datasheet4u.net</li>
<li>scribd</li>
<li>(Insert your favorite document host here)</li>
</ul>
<p>because they have: </p>
<ul>
<li>Unchanging URLs and a policy to not delete documents,</li>
<li>All the links we'll need and/or or a way to generate new ones,</li>
<li>A decent interface, </li>
<li>An API (optional, but preferred so we can have scripted/integrated uploading)</li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>Stack Exchange (or a service they could subscribe to) should host the PDFs. Storage is cheap, and they stand to loose a lot of value when these links start to rot. </p></li>
<li>Something I didn't suggest here, or a combination of the above in some fashion. For instance, one idea to reduce bandwidth costs associated with hosting these is that the original link could be used until the link became rotten, and only then the backup could be used and a suggested edit added to the queue to have someone try to find a new link.</li>
</ol>
| Should we have a standardized PDF upload service/location? |
<p>This is the little-known <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1177/allow-questions-to-be-saved-as-drafts-prior-to-posting/66238#66238">Save Draft</a> feature:</p>
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>We save drafts automatically for all new answers <em>and</em> new
questions once every 45 seconds. </li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>This means that you can replace the text of your answer with a single space, hang around for 45 seconds, and your draft will be replaced with this space. There are better solutions, though, keep reading.</p>
<blockquote>
<ol start="2">
<li><s>Ctrl-s will allow you to save a draft whenever you want (though
it will disallow this happening too aggressively.</s></li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>The <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>-<kbd>s</kbd> save feature <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69831/is-the-save-draft-keyboard-binding-broken/69885#69885">was removed</a>, so we got <a href="https://stackapps.com/questions/2086/manual-draft-save-save-a-draft-on-demand">this Userscript</a> instead. It implements a 'clear' function which replaces the text of your answer (or question) with a single space and then saves this draft. This solution is the closest you'll come to <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/783/cant-get-rid-of-partially-entered-answer#comment-1757">your feature request</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<ol start="3">
<li>Drafts are not supported on self-answer.</li>
<li>Drafts are not supported (yet) on edits.</li>
<li>You only get <strong>one</strong> draft for an answer and one for a question.
(If you start a new post, old draft is blown away.)</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the best solution! Write an awesome new answer, possibly to a different question. As long as you take at least 45 seconds to compose it, your old draft will be deleted and we'll have a new answer. </p>
<blockquote>
<ol start="6">
<li>Drafts will <strong>vanish</strong> and go away after a week.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>This means you didn't wait long enough.</p>
<blockquote>
<ol start="7">
<li>Drafts work for the anonymous user as well.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
| 783 | 2011-08-15T17:15:44.733 | |support|answers| | <p>I was answering a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18204/bluetooth-usb-dongle-on-peripheral-side">question</a> with 0 answers at the time, and while still in the middle of typing my answer, I got a notification that someone else had also answered the question. I clicked on the notification at the top to refresh the page, and found the other person was providing essentially the same answer I was coming up with, so I abandoned my effort and navigated away from the page.</p>
<p>Now, every time I go back to that question, my partially-typed answer still shows up in the edit box. Clearing out all the text, and navigating away has no effect.</p>
| Can't get rid of partially entered answer |
<p>It represents how useful your close/reopen/moderator etc flaggings have been.</p>
<p>Every time you flag something and the action you flagged it for gets taken your flag weight increases. If the flag is 'declined' then your flag weight decreases.</p>
<p>People with larger flag weights get their flags higher up the lists on the moderator pages so they are more likely to be acted on faster.</p>
<p>There is a formula somewhere that defines how much your flag weight increases with each correct flagging. After a flag weight of 500 you start getting less and less weight per flag. </p>
<p>The official FAQ entry is here: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight">https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight</a></p>
| 793 | 2011-08-27T09:16:54.093 | |support| | <p>On my profile page it shows a number after "flag weight". I understand it's related to the number of flagged questions/answers, but what exactly does the number signify?</p>
| What's "flag weight"? |
<p>Usually, the 'active' list is used to mean <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=active</a>, the list found by clicking the Questions button/IC and the "active" tab. I believe you're referring to the front page 'active' tab, located at <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/?tab=active">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/?tab=active</a>. They are completely different lists.</p>
<p>The question appears on the "active" list, but not the front page. This is consistent with the behavior described <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/50988/146495">here</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Also, the front page does not display negatively voted questions, provided that it has refreshed by the time that the question is negative. See voyager's comment on this post. A question that was just recently downvoted might still be on the front page, but by the next time the front page refreshes it should be gone.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This post received quite a few downvotes, so it should have disappeared from the front page. </p>
| 796 | 2011-08-29T13:32:30.053 | |support| | <p>Today I noticed a question disappearing from the "active" list, though it didn't appear to be deleted; at least I still could access it with the question number in the URL, and it got another vote after it disappeared as well. Can anybody explain what happened here? </p>
<p>The question in question :-) is <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18732/lets-brainstorm-on-projects-ideas">this one</a>. I wanted to monitor it because of its downvotes and wanted to see if it got closed.</p>
| Question disappearing from "active" |
<p>You had <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/18783/multiple-pulses-from-single-button-press/18785#18785">an answer which was deleted</a>, but it got an upvote. As such, the system still expects that you have +10 from it, but it isn't reflected properly on your displayed reputation or your profile page.</p>
<p>By going to <code>https://electronics.stackexchange.com/reputation</code>, you can view an accurate audit of your reputation on the site. This is accurate by excluding the reputation from deleted posts and votes, which otherwise are not reflected in your denormalized display value. You can set your reputation to this correct value by hitting the "recalculate" button located at the bottom of that page. This should also serve to correct today's reputation totals to give you the proper +200, but I recommend waiting until the end of the day so as to ensure all changes for the day (up and down) have settled.</p>
| 798 | 2011-08-30T18:07:50.680 | |support|reputation| | <p>I noticed that my daily rep counter got stuck at 190 instead of the usual 200 cap.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/EO66h.png" alt="rep overview"></p>
<p>I still get upvotes, but no rep.<br>
I tagged it as a bug, but maybe there's another explanation.</p>
| Rep capped at 190 instead of 200 |
<p>I think this is the difference between answering the asker's question, and provide a general solution which is useful for everybody. "Don't try it" may be useful for the asker, but not a general solution. General solutions can get upvotes, the solution to the asker's problem can get an accept.</p>
| 808 | 2011-09-08T18:59:34.020 | |discussion| | <p>I (and presumably other users) have been discouraged by the answers given on EE that don't really answer the question but dispute the method/solution to the problem. For example, in <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/19224/how-to-avoid-interference-in-wireless-communication/19226#19226">this question</a> the OP clearly already has a communications system developed and wants help making it robust, however, in <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/19224/how-to-avoid-interference-in-wireless-communication/19228#19228">this highly up-voted answer</a> the question seems to be avoided and the answer is "you don't have enough knowledge/practice to do what you're doing so don't try". Granted this might be true and another solution might be more practical. The practical trouble is this: no real answer can be accepted since the original question is not answered. Someone who might have the expertise & need, who visits our site later on will glean no valuable information from this question only an answer with a lot of up-votes saying "don't try it rookie". I've had this problem with my own questions, for example <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/9833/two-diodes-in-parallel-for-over-voltage-protection/9838#9838">here</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/15868/isolation-for-microcontroller-that-is-off/15871#15871">here</a>. Even in situations in which it is acknowledged that the proposed solution is most likely not the best solution, but other constraints apply, answers seem to consistently dispute and try to re-engineer the approach rather than aid the solution. I notice this more on the EE site over any other SE sites. Can anything be done to help avoid this? Is this a problem at all?</p>
| What is the policy towards answers such as "don't try what you're doing" |
<p><a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/812/whats-the-meaning-of-highlighted-questions/815#815">Kevin's on the right track</a> - just not completely there. The highlighting is indeed the one that is used for favorite tags. However, you probably don't have any favorite tags.</p>
<p>What happened is called "frequented tags". If a user has <em>zero</em> favorite and ignored tags, then the system will just quietly watch your habits and infer a pseudo-favorite based on what tags you've been frequently visiting. They will be temporarily highlighted in the same fashion as favorite tags.</p>
<p>The method of disabling it is to have some manner of favorite or ignored tag. It doesn't have to be a real tag, though. If you want to, there's also <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/88345/please-let-users-opt-out-of-the-frequented-tag-system">a Meta request to allow opting out of this</a> that you may support.</p>
| 812 | 2011-09-10T12:13:28.047 | |support| | <p>Sometimes the Top Questions page shows certain questions highlighted, like the accelerometer question in the screenshot below.</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/od6Xl.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
<p>What does the highlighting mean? </p>
<p><strong>edit</strong><br>
From Oli's comment it appears that the highlighting isn't clear on every screen. To clarify: the second of the three questions is on a bit darker background than the other two.</p>
| What's the meaning of highlighted questions? |
<p>We are sending out a one time verification email when you sign up to receive new answers on a questions that you ask. This is to confirm that there is a real human at the other end of these emails we send.</p>
| 817 | 2011-09-14T17:31:45.733 | |support|email| | <p>It said the following. It is really from StackExchange? I have been on this site for some time and don't think I have ever seen such a message.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Please verify your Electrical Engineering Email address</p>
<p>To make sure that you receive emails, we need to confirm your email
address. All it takes is a single click.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here are the first few headers. Since 10.x.y.z isn't a public IP address, I can't be sure about anything from that. The SPF warning is concerning.</p>
<pre><code>Received: by 10.204.141.81 with SMTP id l17cs33255bku;
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:32:39 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.204.156.16 with SMTP id u16mr77874bkw.54.1316021558381;
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:32:38 -0700 (PDT)
DomainKey-Status: good
Received-SPF: softfail (google.com: best guess record for domain of transitioning do-not-reply@stackexchange.com does not designate 64.34.119.36 as permitted sender) client-ip=64.34.119.36;
Received: by 10.205.80.68 with POP3 id zt4mf813920bkb.21;
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:32:37 -0700 (PDT)
</code></pre>
| Got an "email verification" email. Is it really from here? |
<p>I have absolutely no idea what was broken here. It works now, so <em>something</em> has changed, but I don't know what. I even compiled and ran the code as it was back when you encountered this issue; still no luck.</p>
<p>I'll tag this <a href="/questions/tagged/status-norepro" class="post-tag moderator-tag" title="show questions tagged 'status-norepro'" rel="tag">status-norepro</a>, not because I'm saying you were imagining this (you obviously weren't), but because I really can't reproduce it. If you see this again, please let me know.</p>
| 835 | 2011-09-30T16:25:07.920 | |bug|status-norepro|syntax-highlighting| | <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/16910/what-transaction-modeling-and-packet-linking-frameworks-exist">This question</a> uses an ASCII diagram and has the verilog tag. </p>
<p>To avoid syntax highlighting, I used the <code><!-- language: lang-none --></code> directive. Per the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#syntax-highlighting">SO FAQ</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>To specify that you don't want any syntax highlighting for a code block, use<br>
<code><!-- language: lang-none --></code></p>
</blockquote>
<p>this should cause the highlighting to dissapear. </p>
<p>It did, in the preview: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wXdzZ.png" alt="preview">
</p>
</blockquote>
<p><sub><sup>Note: this is a dummy edit a little more than 5 minutes after the initial edit, which also displayed the bug</sup></sub></p>
<p>But it didn't take when I saved the edits: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IToIW.png" alt="actual">
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Why is this?</p>
| lang-none specifier only works in preview |
<p>Images uploaded through the image uploader in the editor are uploaded into Stack Exchange's imgur account. Images on this account should never* disappear. Should anything happen, there are a couple processes we've got going on that would allow us to correct for something serious happening.</p>
<p>The image loads fine for me on your question. Network blip perhaps?</p>
<p>*For as long as imgur exists, of course.</p>
| 843 | 2011-10-04T21:22:59.117 | |discussion| | <p>We've been telling people to put images using the included tool which hosts them on imgur and that they're supposed to be hosted there and safe from removal by the host.</p>
<p>I've seen that it isn't so, but I didn't at the time I didn't save links to particular questions and answers. Now I found <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/4803/1240">this</a> question of mine which, at least for me, has a missing picture and the direct link times out. </p>
<p>I've got the impression that the images uploaded to imgur should be saved for considerable time in order to be useful for some time after the question has been made. So what I want to know is how long that time is?</p>
| For how long is imgur supposed to store images used on this site? |
<p>So what happened was that on October 25th (normally I won't expose this but since it's positive and it helps explain quite a bit, I will) the question owner upvoted your answer.</p>
<p>A day later when they accepted it they removed their upvote (by accident I imagine since...) then immediately re-upvoted it. This means the +10 that was part of the rep cap on October 25th moved to October 26th. The way the system works (currently) is it doesn't do an exhaustive back-search and recalc on the way when a vote deletion (the un-upvote) happens to see if you <em>still</em> should have hit the rep cap with other votes.</p>
<p>To fix this up you need to trigger a rep recalc which you can do yourself at the bottom here: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/reputation">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/reputation</a> (note though, this usually results in a rep lost due to migrated/deleted questions that the votes are now gone for - but it will update your rep to the correct totals. and fix the rep cap history)</p>
| 865 | 2011-10-26T12:25:40.620 | |bug|status-bydesign| | <p>I understand about the 200 cap on reputation gained per day by upvotes of answers. It was my understanding that the reputation gained from answers being accepted were exempt from this limit, and I'm pretty sure I've seen this in action before.</p>
<p>However, what happened yesterday confuses me and is inconsistant with the logic as I understand it. Here is a screen shot of the relevant reputation summary:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qX7qD.gif" alt=""></p>
<p>Shouldn't the reputation have been 215 instead of 205? Am I confused or is this a bug?</p>
| Bug in 200 points/day limit logic? |
<h1><strong>Can you ask this here?</strong></h1>
<p>Well, sure, Meta is a fine place to ask a question about promoting projects. Here are a few ways of promoting this, in increasing order of applicability to your situation:</p>
<h2><strong>Commercial advertisement</strong></h2>
<p>If you want to run a commercial ad, send an email to ads@stackexchange.com or call the numbers listed on <a href="http://stackexchange.com/about/contact">the contact page</a>.</p>
<p>Also consider <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33081/should-tags-that-represent-concepts-be-sponsorable/104757#104757">sponsoring a tag</a>. This gives the tag an icon as well as placing your ads on relevant pages like /tagged and the tag page. See the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/android">Android tag</a> for an example, we don't have any of these on Electrical Engineering right now.</p>
<h2><strong>Self promotion through Q&A</strong></h2>
<p>If you want to answer questions about audio generation while referencing your shield, or ask questions about problems you're trying to work through as you design it, then go right ahead! Just make sure you're asking or answering the question rather than just promoting, and disclose your affiliation with the product. If you want to mention it in Chat, same policy applies.</p>
<p>However, asking the question,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I just built the Ronin 802, do you want to preorder it, volunteer as beta testers, offer suggestions, or contribute code/design improvements?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>would <em>not</em> be appropriate. That's not a question. It's not a problem you face. It's not useful to our Q&A.</p>
<p>Here's a better option for you:</p>
<h2><strong>Community Ads</strong></h2>
<p>The officially sanctioned way to do this is through community ads. See: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93312/open-source-advertising-sidebar-2h-2011">Open Source Advertising - Sidebar - 2H 2011</a> for the current promotion; there will be another starting in January.</p>
<p>From that post:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here is your chance to create a <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/12/free-vote-based-advertising-for-open-source-projects/">Free Vote-Based Advertisement for an Open Source Project</a>. Create a graphical ad for an open source programming project and post it as an answer to this question (in the right format), and it will feed live remnant ads on Stack Overflow.</p>
<p>It must be an advertisement <strong>soliciting the participation and contribution of programmers writing actual source code</strong>. This is not intended as a general purpose ad for consumer products which just happen to be open source. It's for finding programmers who will help contribute code or other programmery things (documentation, code review, bug fixes, etc.).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Assuming that you mean "contribute code or design improvements" by <em>see if there's anything they might like to add to it.</em> (which seems likely, based on my reading of your <a href="http://www.roninsynth.com/?page_id=336" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Contribute</a> page), you should qualify for this program! While the visitors to this Meta question will be quality people who are well-qualified to contribute, that program will put your request for help in front of about 10,000 times more eyeballs.</p>
<p>I do note that your firmware design files are in a zip file. That's not exactly contribution friendly. The site for the product is great, but I suggest that you host the project on Github, Bitbucket, Google Code, Source Forge, or another open-source hosting engine.</p>
<p>See also <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/12/free-vote-based-advertising-for-open-source-projects/">the blog post</a> and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23899/free-vote-based-advertising-for-open-source-projects">introductory MSO question</a> for more information on community ads.</p>
| 866 | 2011-10-27T21:55:36.250 | |discussion|support| | <p>As many of you know, I've been working on a project with fellow electronics.stackexchange user <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/4245/majenko">Majenko</a>. Much of the project is born out of conversations on this site. The electronics.stackexchange has played a pivotal role in shaping the design of this project.</p>
<p>I shared some of the early thoughts and designs on the project through the EE chat - thanks to everyone for commenting on our work so far, it's been immensely helpful.</p>
<p>In short, the project is an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source" rel="nofollow noreferrer">open source</a> programmable synthesizer. It's called the Ronin 802.</p>
<p>The website is now online and the project has just gone live today.</p>
<p>I posted this on the front page:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So far we have produced five different versions of the Ronin 802, and
we are now in the final stages of the design process. Over the next
two weeks we will be scrutinizing the hardware and taking suggestions
from the electrical engineering community for possible improvements.
At the end of this two week period we will be ordering a final
production prototype. Once we are happy with this prototype, the first
batch of boards will be manufactured and will be available to buy
before Christmas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I'd like to ask the members of this community to have a look at the project and see if there's anything they might like to add to it.</p>
<p>I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask for help, let me know if there's somewhere more appropriate.</p>
<p>If you want more info on this project, please visit the website: <a href="http://roninsynth.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://roninsynth.com</a></p>
<p>Thanks :)</p>
| Can I ask this here? |
<p>This edge condition was recently fixed, so it should work now.</p>
| 888 | 2011-11-18T13:16:24.300 | |bug|status-completed|comments| | <p>When you are typing a new comment or editing an existing comment, if you @lert 2 people you get the warning saying you can only @lert 1 person. This is of course by design.</p>
<p>However, if you remove the @lert of the second person within 5 seconds and then hit the button to submit the comment you receive an error saying you can only comment once every 5 seconds.</p>
<p>I believe the code that establishes having submitted a comment should come after the code that checks to see if you are @lerting 2 people. That way once the @lert is fixed you wont get the 5 second error message.</p>
| Can only comment once every 5 seconds error appears even when a comment wasn't posted |
<blockquote>
<p>should tags be descriptive of what they represent or rather convey some sort of instruction to the user.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Definitely the latter, meaning <strong>the tag wiki should spend <em>most</em> of its time explaining <em>how to use the tag properly</em>.</strong></p>
<p>It can do both, but the priority particularly in the excerpt is "when should I use, and not use, this tag?"</p>
<p>As you noted <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/improved-tagging/">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/improved-tagging/</a> is the proper guidance, we tried to make the tag wiki editing sidebar have an abbreviated form of this advice.</p>
| 890 | 2011-11-24T14:41:41.393 | |discussion|support|tags| | <p>There are quite a few tags that need cleenup, better descriptions and wikis. My question is, should tags be descriptive of what they represent or rather convey some sort of instruction to the user.</p>
<p>Examples:</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mosfet" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'mosfet'" rel="tag">mosfet</a> provides a clear explanation of what an mosfet is.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/usb" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'usb'" rel="tag">usb</a> "USB=Universal Serial Bus. Specify which chip you are using, if applicable, in your question."</p>
<p>Notwithstanding that the usb tag is poor by any standards, should it be an instruction or an explanation? Another example: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/transistor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'transistor'" rel="tag">transistor</a></p>
<p>I quote <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/199/muddy-tags">Kortuk</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the wiki is to make it clear to the community what it means.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>How does this relate to the excerpt?</h2>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>I found this post by Jeff Atwood: <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/improved-tagging/">http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/improved-tagging/</a></p>
<p>Answers this in part, but I still think that some tags are overly instructive and need some more flesh.</p>
| Should tags, specifically excerpts, be descriptive or instructive? |
<p>I think answers should be well-researched and authoritative. If the answer is a brief one-liner or just a pointer to a website or really needs more input to confirm, I'll leave it as a comment.</p>
| 931 | 2012-01-19T14:08:41.950 | |support|comments|answers| | <p>I tried to search for this in the FAQ and in other questions, but my doubt remains.</p>
<p>Opening <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/25305/sequential-logic">this</a> question, but happens quite frequently, I've seen that sometimes are posted comments containing what is effectively an answer to the question, even if brief (and sometimes not even that).</p>
<p>So i wonder if there is a policy for choosing between the two options, or what is the reason to choose to comment instead of answering.</p>
| How to choose between answer or comment? |
<p>This is a very good place to ask questions in relation to this. I am not sure why every suggests you go to a different site, but we have been slowly growing in all of our subject areas and firmware has always been a goal.</p>
| 947 | 2012-01-25T09:00:33.257 | |discussion| | <p>I am new to Ateml (AVR) - new to embedded programming. I just looked at <a href="http://forum.atmel.com/" rel="nofollow">http://forum.atmel.com/</a> and they seem to have only two forums: "Touch Technology" and "CryptoMemory".</p>
<p>Maybe I missed something, but I have a shed-load of questions and none of them fit into either of those two categories.</p>
<p>Where's the best place to ask and get answers? Here? <a href="http://stackoverflow.com">http://stackoverflow.com</a> ? Somewhere else?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance</p>
| Where's the best place to ask questions about Atmel AVR software (with FreeRTOS)? |
<p>Thanks to the great work of the people at <a href="https://www.circuitlab.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">CircuitLab</a> (special thanks to Yuan Wei, the developer who worked with me on this), this is now live.</p>
<p>For <s>users with at least 11 reputation,</s> <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2717/why-is-the-circuitlab-tool-privileged/2728#2728">everybody,</a> there is a new button in the editor's toolbar:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/UbKXS.png" alt="screenshot of the editor with the new button"></p>
<p>This button will launch the CircuitLab schematics editor / simulator. Clicking “Save and Insert” in the schematics editor closes it again and inserts the circuit's image into the post editor.</p>
<p>When editing an existing post that already contains a schematic, you can also click “edit the above schematic” which appears below the circuit image in the post editor's preview. This will open the corresponding circuit in the editor for further refinement.</p>
<p>If you're interested in some technical details and design decisions regarding the editor integration, you can read my <a href="https://ux.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/647/can-stackexchange-license-balsamiq-for-mockups-on-ux-stackexchange/781#781">announcement post on meta.ux</a> (starting from “This was a somewhat…”). This was about the Balsamiq mockup editor, which was the first external editor that we integrated with a Stack Exchange site. The CircuitLab editor's integration is very similar; from a user's perspective it's almost identical.</p>
<p>CircuitLab officially only <a href="https://www.circuitlab.com/docs/system-requirements/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">supports Firefox and Chrome</a>. It seems to however work just fine in the other browsers that we support on Stack Exchange (IE9+, Safari, Opera). Nonetheless, when you launch the editor in a browser other than Firefox or Chrome, we'll warn you that the browser isn't officially supported by the editor (but we won't refuse to launch it – as I said, it generally works fine).</p>
<p>For detailed information about the CircuitLab editor, have a look at their <a href="https://www.circuitlab.com/docs/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">documentation</a>.</p>
| 963 | 2012-02-01T13:30:40.667 | |feature-request|status-completed|editing|circuitlab|schematic| | <p>I've noted that really often, questions require the use of schematics, and answers too.</p>
<p>Since I've seen some online editors, why don't we also embed one, to encourage the use of proper schematics?</p>
| Embedding a schematic editor |
<p>No, I hadn't read it. Thanks for pointing that out. </p>
<p>We try to keep our scope amicable to both experts in electrical and electronics engineering and to enthusiasts. The experts would probably like to avoid seeing 100 versions of <em>"My electronic gadget X broke, here's some fuzzy pictures of a burned spot on the PCB, how do I fix it?"</em> and <em>"I'm a software guy, how do I get my Arduino to blink an LED?"</em>. The enthusiasts would like to ask the above questions, and they'd like to get responses to more difficult questions from the experts. The experts might even, once in a while, like to ask and answer rigorous reverse engineering problems.</p>
<p>At present, our problem is that the enthusiasts outnumber the experts 10 to 1, and don't seem to be interested in making room for the experts. If we allow that to happen, the site will become a Yahoo! Answers clone, with questionable advice being proffered by people who don't really know what they're doing, and upvoted by others who don't know what's going on. That would be a tragedy.</p>
<p>The text in the /about page was provided by Stack Exchange (or Littlebird Electronics, way back in the day?). Community mods don't have the ability to edit this.</p>
<p>We do, however, have the ability to edit the FAQ. Its first sentence (used to) read similarly to the /about page:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This site is for electronics hardware hacking enthusiasts...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I've changed this to read:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I suggest that the /about page be modified similarly. I submit </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a free, community driven Q&A for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>as the new text.</p>
| 966 | 2012-02-03T22:30:26.983 | |discussion|scope| | <p>Have you read the first presentation of this site, in the <em>About</em> page??</p>
<p>It says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a free, community driven Q&A for electronic hardware hacking enthusiasts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Isn't what many people here try to avoid???</p>
| The real scope of this site |
<p>I don't think the discussion on the question you linked is really a great example. I don't see any reason why a schematic can't have color on it unless it causes it to actually be unreadable, which I have never seen.</p>
<p>I am not sure there is even a problem so it is hard for me to support an FAQ discussing something that isn't an issue. If people really think there needs to be something, I would rather it be more broad talking about how to post good images, not just schematics.</p>
<p>After your edit, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/1024/good-tools-for-drawing-schematics">here is a wiki</a> that has already been made to talk about how to make schematics. As far as attaching it to a question, there is already a question <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/883/placing-images-stored-on-your-computer-in-a-question">here</a> that explains how to do so. It seems to be very rare that someone doesn't know how to upload an image once they get the rep to be able to do so.</p>
| 982 | 2012-02-12T02:07:15.137 | |support|schematic| | <p>Could we have a FAQ or wiki on how to best embed a schematic?</p>
<p>The discussion on this question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/26484/how-arduino-power-supply-works">How Arduino Power supply works</a> shows that the process can be confusing, particularity to newcomers.</p>
<p>Having good, readable schematics to accompany questions seems like such a big benefit that it would be in everyone's benefit to explain to people how to do it in the best way.</p>
<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> Based upon Kellenjb's comment, I would like to broaden my question. I was not really asking if a schematic should be in color or B&W, rather I am asking for general guidance on a simple and easy way for a newcomer to create a simple schematic and attach it to a question.</p>
<p>My thought is <em>any</em> schematic is better than trying to describe a circuit in just words, and further I think (I could be wrong) that many newcomers don't really know how to create and attach one with their question.</p>
| FAQ or wiki on how to best embed a schematic |
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