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<h2>Yes, but only with some conditions:</h2> <ul> <li>Questions about identifying replacement parts shall be treated with the guidelines for repair questions.</li> </ul> <p>In an addition to other conditions already proposed.</p>
6697
2018-09-04T02:18:52.380
|discussion|identification|
<p>In the interest of having an explicit strategy on component identification questions, here is a "poll" question for community opinion on the matter. Historically, these questions have been allowed, but this is an existing strategy, not necessarily the current opinion of the community. This question is designed to be a simple binary question that will be used to shape a more nuanced policy later. I will include the pro and con reasons that I can think of, if you have another reason that I did not include, feel free to leave a comment. </p> <h1> TLDR: Should we allow component identification questions? </h1> <p>Please note, only upvotes will be counted.</p>
Should we keep component identification questions?
<p>I've once again posted my opinions on the change, this time at <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/315639/274872">https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/315639/274872</a>. I encourage everyone to do the same.</p>
6736
2018-09-18T22:22:08.373
|support|
<p>Something changed at SE, or at least EE.SE in the last few hours. I just logged in, and the same browser window size I had been using doesn't work anymore without very annoying horizontal scrolling. It appears the reason is that the buttons HOME, QUESTIONS, TAGS, USERS, and UNANSWERED are now on the left, using up more window width. These used to be at the top where they weren't really in the way.</p> <p>On the off chance someone at SE cares, I don't like this because now I can have only one slim window on the screen at the same time, whereas previously more of <i>my</i> screen was left to my uses. I use the browser for various things other than SE, and having to resize the window between uses is a pain. It's also totally unnecessary for SE to require that much window width.</p> <p>However, the question is, <b><i>How can I get the old layout back?</i></b>.</p>
Web page format change, much wider than previously
<p>Currently we don't really need more mods, as flags' handling is not a big issue. We have an average of about 2 hours before a flag is handled, and the queue is more often empty than full.</p> <p>I have to add that Dave, W5VO and Nick are handling the great majority of the flags, and if one of them were to go inactive we would soon need to replace him.</p> <p>What could be helpful, in my opinion, is to increase the reviewing activity, by established users more than mods.</p>
6749
2018-09-21T13:41:25.237
|discussion|election|moderators|
<p>It's custom for SE sites to hold regular moderator elections. However, it seems there has been no election on EE for 4 years. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/election/">List of elections</a>. </p> <p>Why is this so? The site appears to have a steady growth of users and we need moderator numbers to grow in proportion to this, in order to preserve quality and prevent moderator burn-outs.</p> <p>Also, since moderators are volunteers and can go inactive like everyone else, keeping a steady flow of new moderators is important. Particularly if the veteran moderators can teach and mentor new ones.</p>
What happened with moderator elections?
<p>Yes:</p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67847/can-you-lose-an-ability-if-your-reputation-falls-below-a-threshold">Can you lose an ability if your reputation falls below a threshold?</a></p> <p>I actually experienced it myself. Some guy serial-upvoted me past the 10,000 threshold (note: nobody asked him to do so). I could then see the deleted posts. He did it just for fun, so then he cancelled his upvotes, and I was unable to see those posts again (until I regained the rep more "legally").</p>
6752
2018-09-27T12:55:15.117
|discussion|specific-question|
<p>Suppose your rep is just over the borderline of a new privilege (eg. reviewing the edit queue), and you get downvoted, or downvote something yourself. </p> <p>If the loss of rep brings you under the privilege requirement, do you lose the privilege? </p>
Can you lose privileges with loss of rep?
<p>If these questions need work, the best course of action would be to close the question, and then direct the users to the on topic page and here: <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6710/component-identification-question-guidelines">Component Identification Question Guidelines</a></p> <p>None of these questions fit the guidelines that were agreed upon.</p> <h1> > Rules for Asking: </h1> <blockquote> <ul> <li>Include a clear picture of the part in question, including a ruler if possible for scale. </li> <li>Type out any text on the part. Many parts have text that is difficult to read from a picture.</li> <li>Include any information about the surrounding circuit, or any knowledge on the type of system your component came from. </li> <li>Include the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/identification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;identification&#39;" rel="tag">identification</a> tag.</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p>The first question is asking for a specific product and is worded incorrectly, we defiantly do not help people shop on this site.</p> <p>The other two questions do not follow the guidelines for asking, they do not provide the text on the part or other information about the circuit. Props to the OP's for providing a picture. </p> <p>Another course of action would be to edit the question and make it presentable, because that about as much effort as closing it or complaining about it. </p>
6755
2018-09-28T09:20:30.520
|discussion|identification|
<p>Since <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6710/component-identification-question-guidelines">this post</a> outlining component identification guidelines, I keep spotting identification questions being closed for no visible reason or for superficial reasons like a missing <code>identification</code> tag.</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/394036/speaker-input-connector">Speaker input connector</a> got closed as recommendation question because the author mentioned they wanted to buy similar connectors at Digikey. However, the question asked (What are these plugs called?) is obviously an identification question: the OP didn't ask to search Digikey for them, only which name to search for. The question is missing the <code>identification</code> tag, however, the OP was not told they had to include it.</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/395056/please-help-me-identify-this-component">please help me identify this component</a> (now deleted (<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/IbC2g.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">screenshot</a>)) was closed as a repair question, even though the OP already found the (suspected) point of failure and were asking to identify the component they wanted to replace. Again, it misses the tag and the OP didn't type out the text on the part, but I don't see how a newcomer could guess it was required if nobody tells them.</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/398190/i-think-this-is-an-op-amp-bim-79z2-how-can-i-find-datasheet">I think this is an Op Amp (BIM-79Z2) how can I find datasheet?</a> was deleted by the OP (<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/O0TbL.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer">screenshot</a>), arguably because it was poorly received (4 close votes at the moment of deletion, condescending comments, downvote). The original question was asking to identify several components, however it kept getting close votes even after I edited the question to limit it to the component mentioned in the title.</p> <p>To sum it up, I don't think it's a sane approach to expect that newcomers will follow the rules without even telling them what the rules are. People who disagree with the value of identification questions to the site are welcome to discuss it on meta, NOT to take it out on random users posting actual questions.</p> <p>Or did I overlook something which warrants closing and deleting those questions?</p>
Identification questions getting closed formally
<p>I don't agree with the posted answers so far. I believe the question is on-topic and should be re-opened. No other Stack Exchange fits the question better either.</p> <p>The question is asking for the rationale about common terms used for electronic signals. Tx and Rx can be found everywhere in electrical engineering, from formal standard terms to IC datasheets. Asking about the rationale behind the name should be as much on-topic as asking about the rationale for the terms "Vdd" or "Vcc". </p> <p>The posted answer isn't great and opinion-based, but only since it lacks sources. That is no fault of the OP. </p> <p>I'm voting to re-open the question.</p> <hr> <p>(It is quite possible that the answer originates from radio communication and Morse code. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code_abbreviations" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Wikipedia seems to agree</a> and in turn cites various sources.)</p>
6759
2018-09-30T20:21:52.597
|discussion|closed-questions|
<p>I was looking up on google why there was an x in RX and TX, and I found <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/214328/whats-the-meaning-of-x-in-rxd-and-txd-of-uart?newreg=b1b94130b78a4e7594f8c6353598bd8d">this</a>. While maybe it was off-topic and should be in English.SE (Though I think EE makes more sense. At least, the OP will find a better answer here), how could this be marked as "opinion based"?</p> <p>Even if the answers are opinion based, the "closed" box states the question is what needs to be edited. This doesn't make sense to me - the question is as objective as a question can get. History is true and permanent. Maybe no one knows the history, and thus may create bad answers, but regardless the question itself of "What's the meaning of “x” in RxD and TxD of UART?" just isn't opinion based at all. It's a very explicit and factual question.</p> <p>If the answers are comments are poor, perhaps require higher reputation to answer. I've seen this implemented before. I just don't believe this should have been marked as "opinion based".</p> <p>Am I simply misunderstanding the meaning of "opinion based"?</p>
Opinion Based question?
<p>This is <em>definitely not</em> appropriate. I have reverted to the most recent valid revision.</p> <p>We prompt for more detail by asking for the missing pieces in a comment (which is exactly what comments are for). Then optionally vote to close as <em>unclear</em> so that a lot of answers won't be invalidated by the new information.</p>
6761
2018-10-01T17:55:23.550
|discussion|
<p>I recently saw, on <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/398786/convert-3v-to-5v-very-high-amperage-using-boost-converter" title="this question">this question</a>, that someone - rather than asking for the OP to provide more details via a comment, as I usually see - edited the question and wrote a "template" containing placeholders where the details would be needed.</p> <p>Is this appropriate? One concern of mine is that such template content is potentially confusing to people newly arriving at the question, and that the intent of the template is only made clear by digging into the edit history.</p>
How do we prompt for more detail?
<p>I have lots of experience of this from SO, after doing thousands of reviews there. They have exactly the same problem with sloppy reviewers, though on a much bigger scale. Particularly when it comes to suggested edits. The term used is "robo reviewers", people who just click approve without thinking (check the term on <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/">https://meta.stackoverflow.com/</a> and you'll find plenty about the subject). The root of the problem is that users get a bit of reputation and badges for reviewing.</p> <p>There are measures in place - the audit reviews. Failing enough of these will make you automatically banned from reviewing. First ban, a short period of time. Second ban, longer, etc. The audits are however easy to dodge for someone gambling the system on purpose.</p> <p>Normal accept/reject ratio should from somewhere around 70/30 to 30/70, depending on how pedantic the reviewer is. People with accept ratio over 90% are clearly doing a poor job, because edits are rarely consistently of that high a quality.</p> <p>Bringing the specific matter up on meta isn't really a good idea, since this should be handled by diamond moderators rather than "lynch mobs" of meta users.</p> <hr> <p>What you <em>can</em> do upon finding that a review was incorrectly accepted:</p> <ul> <li>Check the accept/reject ratio of the users that approved it. Everyone makes mistakes, but someone with an unusal high accept ratio is a likely robo-reviewer.</li> <li>Upon finding someone you suspect of robo-reviewing, check some other reviews they have approved incorrectly.</li> <li>If you find a pattern of bad reviewing, flag for diamond moderator attention on the original post where the edit was incorrectly approved. Explain that you suspect user xxx of "robo-reviewing". Post a link to one of the suggested edits they incorrectly approved.</li> <li>Diamond mods will take it from there and investigate the user, then hand out a review ban if needed.</li> <li>Regardless of how the moderator errand goes (you'll not be notified of how it ended), you can help out by doing rollbacks of all incorrectly approved edits that you found.</li> </ul>
6774
2018-10-07T14:31:03.547
|discussion|feature-request|reviewing|
<p>I find consistently poor reviews in the Suggested Edits queue, by a given reviewer.</p> <p>I recently voted to reject a particularly unnecessary/harmful edit, and found that it was voted for approval by the reviewer mentioned above. No big deal, if this didn’t happen so frequently, but it does.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/nNBth.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/nNBth.jpg" alt="user stats"></a></p> <p>I don’t mean to call anyone out, so I’ve scratched out the names, but to compare the stats:</p> <ul> <li>I seem to reject ~14%</li> <li>Another rejects ~20%</li> <li>The third rejects ~2%</li> </ul> <p>My question comes down to this: <em>Does anyone review the reviewers?</em></p> <p>And, I would suggest a feature that gives notification to a reviewer if their review statistics grossly deviate from the average (after the user has submitted enough reviews for a fair calculation, perhaps 100).</p> <p><hr /> <em>edit</em></p> <p>Here are a couple of examples:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/uzCms.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/uzCms.png" alt="approved 1"></a> <em>(comment/answer posted to the question)</em></p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2zRg.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/a2zRg.png" alt="approved 2"></a> <em>(original post deleted and replaced with spam)</em></p>
Poor reviewing of Suggested Edits
<p>Sounds reasonable to me. All <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/convert" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;convert&#39;" rel="tag">convert</a> tags have been removed. The tag will age away as long as no new questions get added.</p> <p>If it continues to be created, we can blacklist the tag.</p>
6779
2018-10-09T21:53:28.047
|discussion|status-completed|tag-cleanup|
<p>There seem to be a small but steady stream of questions being tagged as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/convert" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;convert&#39;" rel="tag">convert</a>.</p> <p>From what I can tell, they seem to range from power regulation ("convert 110V to 230V", etc.), to digital logic ("convert 32bit 2's complement..."), to programming ("convert float to hex"), and so fourth.</p> <p>There is no wiki entry or usage for the tag, and given the varied use of it, it appears to be a completely meaningless tag.</p> <p>There are <s>several instances of</s> now only two questions that are only tagged as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/convert" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;convert&#39;" rel="tag">convert</a>, both of which are closed. So deleting the tag now would only require those two to be retagged.</p> <p>I'm of the opinion that <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/convert" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;convert&#39;" rel="tag">convert</a> should be consigned to the dustbin of tags never to see the light again. Thoughts?</p>
Tag Cleanup: [convert]
<p>If it's off-topic, then close it as off-topic. </p> <p>If it's a <em>good</em> question that is off-topic, then you can flag it using the "Other" line and a moderator can review it for migration.</p>
6780
2018-10-11T14:24:47.720
|discussion|flagging|
<p>Steps: Click "flag" for a question. Choose "should be closed", then "off-topic because" and then "This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network". I, at least am then shown two options for "another site": "belongs on electronics.meta... " and "belongs on superuser.com".</p> <p>But say it belongs, IMO, on <em>neither</em>, or even specifically, on, say, "Signal Processing"? How does one indicate that?</p>
Flag a question, choices for suggesting another site
<p>It's no longer relevant to EE.SE, but every SE site goes through a "private beta" stage as part of its development, and this FAQ is part of the standard boilerplate that goes along with that.</p>
6788
2018-10-12T11:48:44.450
|bug|
<p>I was looking at <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/asking">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/asking</a>. There is a list of links, including:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask-beta">How to Ask Questions in Private Beta</a></li> </ul> <p>What's this? Something left over from an older, better, happier time? Is it still relevant?</p>
What is "Private Beta"?
<p>Doesn't really matter what kind of question it is or how much rep you have, if it's not on topic then the question will be closed.</p> <p>It also helps to have a well written question, and ask a specific question so people know how to answer.</p>
6793
2018-10-13T17:19:00.813
|discussion|support|
<p>More than half of the questions asked on this site seem to be either review/fix my design (<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/399929/opinions-on-what-ive-come-up-with-for-a-12-v-to-5-v-automotive-circuit">Example</a>) or I don't know how to design, please help me design it (<a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/400877/designing-brake-light-with-specific-luminous-intensity">Example</a>). Is EE Stack a free design assistance forum?</p> <p>I'm slightly confused what is supposed to be asked on stack? I thought the whole idea of Stack was to ask generic, reusable questions to create a database.</p> <p>I understand specific design questions may require design help ect, but the vast majority seem to be 'Design this thing for my Uni project/hobby project ect'. Which I expect is the reason that whenever you go to 'active' the vast majority of questions come from people who have >50 rep and are never seen again.</p> <p>Can experienced members please clarify?</p>
Is EE Stack a free design and advice website?
<p>For many years, the SE policy has been that we don't care <em>why</em> someone is asking a question, but only about the quality of the question itself. That is, a student asking for help with their homework will receive the same treatment as an electrical engineer looking to verify their design. In either case, they have to demonstrate an insight in the topic and their attempts to solve the problem so far.</p> <p>A question which provides a complete calculation of some electronics problem, with provided schematics etc, shows sufficient research effort. It is fine and on-topic.</p> <p>As for the "monkey with typewriter" case, the attempt provided has to be relevant to the question. These attempts are often easy to spot. If the "research effort" or "attempted solution" is just fluff and not relevant to the question, it should be treated like a question with no effort at all: close as too broad.</p>
6796
2018-10-15T13:30:18.173
|discussion|homework|
<p>The current de-facto policy we have regarding homework-like questions is to <strong>require an attempt at solving</strong> the problem by the OP. While this keeps the most blatant cases of laziness out of our question list, there are at least two kinds of questions which I personally don't like that slip through:</p> <ul> <li><p>"check my calculations" - this is when the OP asks yet another question about equivalent resistance or Kirchhoff's laws. They made their calculations, but suspect there's a mistake and ask to double-check it. This is a waste of time IMO, they could simply present their solution to the professor giving them the course, or simply enter the circuit in a simulator and get the right answer.</p></li> <li><p>"monkey with a typewriter" - this is when the OP doesn't know how to solve the problem, but since questions without an attempted solutions are closed, they will present a nonsensical solution to fulfill the rules. A proper answer will still have to start from scratch.</p></li> </ul> <p>Yet, the requirement to present an attempted solution keeps away some legitimate questions where the OP doesn't have an idea where to start. As an example, if the OP doesn't know about delta-star transformation, they will be completely stuck with a problem where they need to apply one. They can of course resort to the "monkey with a typewriter" strategy, but I don't think that's very educational.</p> <p>Perhaps a better policy for homework-like questions would be to favor <em>conceptual</em> questions, which <strong>don't ask for specific numbers</strong>. Such a policy would keep people who are too lazy to plug their numbers in well-known formulas away, and also get rid of "check my calculations" questions. Additionally, we would be able to keep questions which the OP doesn't know how to tackle, without giving them an incentive to present a nonsensical solution as an excuse. And conceptual questions make better duplicate targets too, because exact numbers don't matter.</p> <p>Now, I'm not arguing that engineering questions should not include numbers. In fact, if the OP is debugging a circuit and had measured a voltage at some point which they think is abnormal, the exact value of the voltage is crucial for answering. But I believe it's fairly easy to distinguish homework-like questions from engineering ones: they feature circuits with no practical application, have artificial constrains (e.g. a requirement to calculate something that could be easily measured) and so on, so I don't think we'll be throwing out the baby with the water.</p> <p>I'm also not opposing to homework-like questions which include numbers as an illustration. If the OP have an question with numeric values printed on the schematic, they don't have to remove them. What would be forbidden is to ask for a specific number: be it the equivalent resistance, voltage between points A and B, or the cutoff frequency.</p> <p>Also note that we don't have to drop the "attempt at solving" requirement, though I would suggest we lax it quite a bit. That is, the OP who has been tasked with equivalent resistance calculation and didn't try anything will still get their question closed, either because of "no attempt" rule, or because they asked for a specific numerical solution. The OP who worked on their problem and got stuck in the middle will be able to both demonstrate a reasonable attempt at solving and ask about a specific step rather than the final answer.</p> <p>Any thoughts on the above? Examples where such a policy would be lousy?</p> <p>Edit: please don't hesitate to downvote if you dislike the idea. So far all answers I got are critical, yet there's only one downvote.</p>
Are we keeping the right kind of homework questions on the site?
<p>I can recommend to ask for SO developers to implement a tags tree. In this case you would have something like:</p> <pre><code>stm32 +- stm32f0 +- stm32f1 +- stm32f2 +- stm32l </code></pre> <p>This would make sub-tags to automatically merge under parent tag. At this moment this is a common issue in large communities.</p>
6801
2018-10-24T07:10:38.797
|discussion|status-completed|
<p>Our tagging system is inconsistent in the way we treat different microcontroller families. I'm looking for people's opinions on how (or even <em>if</em>) we should make them more uniform.</p> <p>The <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pic" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pic&#39;" rel="tag">pic</a> tag, for example, is used for (almost) all PIC-related questions. Indeed, there are tag synonyms which automatically rename any PIC subfamily (e.g. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pic16" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pic16&#39;" rel="tag">pic16</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pic18" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pic18&#39;" rel="tag">pic18</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/dspic33" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;dspic33&#39;" rel="tag">dspic33</a>, etc.) to the generic <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pic" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pic&#39;" rel="tag">pic</a> tag. This tag is currently used in 2224 questions.</p> <p>However, with the STM32-series microcontrollers, the tag structure allows the questions to be divided into families:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32&#39;" rel="tag">stm32</a> (generic family tag; 1258 questions)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f0" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f0&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f0</a> (99 questions)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f1" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f1&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f1</a> (4 + 186, see below)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f2" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f2&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f2</a> (9)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f3" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f3&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f3</a> (38)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f4" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f4&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f4</a> (322)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f7" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f7&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f7</a> (32)</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32l" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32l&#39;" rel="tag">stm32l</a> (25) (that's a lowercase &quot;L&quot;)</li> </ul> <p>So, our options:</p> <ol> <li><p>Allow the PICs to be segregated by family.</p> <p>This would kinda suck, frankly, because we'd have to remove the existing tag synonyms and then manually separate out the different PIC questions.</p> </li> <li><p>Create tag synonyms to combine all of the STM32 families.</p> <p>This is easy to do, but difficult to undo (see #1!).</p> </li> <li><p>&quot;Stop worrying about it, already!!&quot;</p> <p>I often hear this from my spouse, and it's often good advice :)</p> </li> </ol> <p>Personally, I strongly prefer the ST model. There is very little similarity between an STM32F0 and an STM32F7, either in technology, use-cases, or EE.SE questions! Similarly, there is almost no overlap between a PIC16F and a DSPIC33.</p> <p>However, with the difficulties of Option #1, I'm leaning toward following my wife's advice :)</p> <p><strong>Your thoughts?</strong></p> <hr /> <p>In the meantime, there are a few tags which I believe are overly-specific and should be wrapped into <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f1" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f1&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f1</a>. I'll go and propose some synonyms...</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smt32f10x" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;smt32f10x&#39;" rel="tag">smt32f10x</a> (156 questions!) and</li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stm32f103c8t6" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stm32f103c8t6&#39;" rel="tag">stm32f103c8t6</a> (30 questions)</li> </ul>
What to do with all of these "STM32"-derived Tags?
<p>This is site wide (through all of SE's networks) and is not going to change as it would affect all sites. This has already been covered here in the meta:</p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/allow-downvoting-comments">Allow downvoting comments</a></p>
6807
2018-10-25T08:43:38.067
|feature-request|
<p>Why are there no down votes for comments as there are for questions and answers. People sometimes use the comments to give answers as well.</p>
Why are there no down votes for comments
<p>There doesn't seem to be any point having both of them.</p> <p>I've <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/multiplexer/synonyms">proposed the tag synonym</a> on the multiplexer page to have <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mux" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;mux&#39;" rel="tag">mux</a> mapped to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/multiplexer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;multiplexer&#39;" rel="tag">multiplexer</a> as they are basically common terms for the same thing.</p>
6814
2018-10-31T19:16:30.650
|discussion|tag-cleanup|
<p>I just saw <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/404339/how-does-the-circuit-design-of-a-42-mux-look-like">this question</a> where the OP tagged the question as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mux" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;mux&#39;" rel="tag">mux</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/multiplexer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;multiplexer&#39;" rel="tag">multiplexer</a>.</p> <p>Looking at the info for <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mux" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;mux&#39;" rel="tag">mux</a>, there's no information whatsoever.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/7xvnF.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/7xvnF.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <hr> <p>With <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/multiplexer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;multiplexer&#39;" rel="tag">multiplexer</a>, this is different.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qVbqg.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qVbqg.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <hr> <p><strong>Is there a reason why we need both of these tags if one is simply a shorthanded writing expression of the other?</strong> Both tags do receive a fair amount of utilization.</p>
Mux, Multiplexer: Why not merge these two tags?
<p>Thanks for asking first, but I'd have to say no, it isn't on-topic, and there's no way to make it on-topic.</p> <p>The biggest problem I see is that from your photographs, it isn't an electrical part at all, but rather a mechanical part. Its only electrical connection seems to be to the ground plane of the PCB. It <em>may</em> have something to do with making a shielding connection, but even then, it would be very specific to the mechanical design of that particular phone.</p>
6822
2018-11-04T11:12:29.847
|discussion|
<p>I wonder if the following question is on-topic and if not if their is another Stack-Exchange site I could ask it.</p> <p>From the repair tag description it seems like it is no on-topic but I just wanted to be sure and ask if there is a way change it to be on-topic:</p> <blockquote> <p>Questions relating to electrical/electronic repair. Questions on the repair of consumer electronics, appliances, or other devices must involve specific troubleshooting steps and demonstrate a good understanding of the underlying design of the device being repaired. Please ensure your questions are somewhat generic in nature so they are likely to help future visitors and not too localized to a specific piece of equipment.</p> </blockquote> <p>I am afraid my question is to specific as it is. But I wonder if I could change it to make it more general, for example by asking more about the function of the part.</p> <p>The question would be:</p> <p>I am currently trying to change the display of my LG G2.</p> <p>When I tried to remove the display I noticed that one screw turned through. It turned out, that the electrical part the screw is attached to detached from the board. I assume that it was already detached before I started my repair efforts. I wonder if the phone can still work with this part being lose.</p> <p>So my question is: <strong>What type of electrical part is the loose part and how does it work?</strong> .</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/foN8u.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/foN8u.jpg" alt="loose Part"></a> <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/PrLLd.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/PrLLd.jpg" alt="loose Part 2"></a> <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gApTp.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gApTp.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Note: I had it fixed before so it was not the first time the display was replaced (not by myself)</p>
Is this question about a part of smartphone concerning it repair ontopic?
<p>We can't migrate old questions, unfortunately. The SE system doesn't allow to migrate questions older than 90 days.</p>
6828
2018-11-14T16:36:10.900
|support|
<p>About 4 years ago, I asked <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/120959/what-is-a-good-nimh-charger">a question</a>, which was closed as off-topic, but is now on topic in <a href="https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/">a recently created SE site</a>. Can someone migrate this question? Thanks in advance.</p>
Request to migrate a question
<p>I'd like to add some points to what Dave Tweed already said in his answer, which I agree with.</p> <ul> <li><p>Reverse engineering usually has lots to do with researching undocumented features, and reverse engineering is a legal mean of obtaining information about a design of a competitor, so it has industrial relevance in the electronics field.</p></li> <li><p>Reverse engineering is also a standard practice in cases where you must cope with a design whose blueprints have been lost (say you have a sophisticated and expensive niche instruments to repair/upgrade and the manufacturer has gone bankrupt and cannot be contacted any longer).</p></li> <li><p>Not yet/well documented silicon/firmware bugs are undocumented "features" that need to be researched. </p></li> <li><p>Often a designer must research whether a component can be used outside the characterization provided by the manufacturer. This is a sort of research on undocumented features. This may involve complex statistical analysis on batches of the part and usually can be outsourced to manufacturers for a price. But sometimes you need to to that yourself because, for example, the manufacturer asks too much or it is not going to do it or it has not the expertise to do that (think of the characterization of a component in extreme environmental conditions, e.g. freezing cold, extreme hot or vacuum).</p></li> </ul> <p>So, IMO, questions about researching undocumented features/behaviors of a component or a design <em>are</em> well withing the scope of our site and electronics design in general.</p>
6830
2018-11-16T23:40:09.423
|discussion|scope|
<p><a href="https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15/electrical-engineering">In chat</a>, I asked about a possible undocumented core temperature sensor in a specific embedded processor. While the discussion itself was helpful, I <a href="https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/47653192#47653192">was told</a> that questions regarding undocumented features is off-topic on the main site because they would be <a href="https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/47653226#47653226">opinion-based</a>. Regardless of the topicality of the original question I wanted to ask, I would like to understand under what circumstances questions based on undocumented features or behavior are on-topic, if any.</p> <p>My argument is that many well-known and commonly used features for microprocessors, FPGAs, CPLDs, etc. are undocumented despite being well-known and having established behavior. In fact, for some microprocessors, you cannot even run an emulator for them for any non-trivial program without supporting undocumented opcodes. So would questions regarding, say, undocumented opcodes, sensors, or JTAG ports be off-topic? Are they always off-topic, or only if the undocumented feature requires a significant amount of guesswork or is otherwise not well known?</p> <p>From what I can see on the rest of meta, even questions regarding hardware which is <em>entirely</em> undocumented <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6471/177824">is on-topic</a> despite every feature lacking documentation of any kind. I also see a number of well-received questions on the main site asking about undocumented features.</p>
Topicality of questions pertaining to undocumented features
<p>I remember this: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/244414/add-ground-earth-to-a-chinese-music-player/244417">Add ground earth to a Chinese music player</a></p> <p>Basically a cheap MP3 player with an unisolated supply, that brings 220V mains straight to its line-out/speaker-out jack. Nice.</p>
6834
2018-11-19T23:49:08.127
|discussion|
<p>Can we have a collection of the worst engineering examples from this beautiful site?</p> <p>The conditions would be:</p> <ul> <li>real, honest example of something that was actually meant seriously</li> <li>some work has went into designing that</li> <li><strong>absolutely</strong> no shaming of the original poster, if anything, happy discussion</li> </ul>
Fun collection: worst finds on this site
<p>Thanks for asking, but no, it doesn't fit here either. It would fall either into the "usage" or "repair" categories, which are both off-topic.</p> <p>You can try our chat area to see whether anyone there is interested in discussing it.</p>
6841
2018-11-27T17:31:55.123
|discussion|
<p>I have a technical question about a small appliance that doesn't fit with the Home Improvement stack exchange. But it's not an electrical engineering question but a electrical safety question and is fairly specific (burnt probe end on skillet controller probe, is it normal?) Thanks!</p>
Can I ask a specific technical question about a small appliance?
<p>Thanks for asking.</p> <p>This would be a topic for chat. Even if you avoid asking for specific product recommendations (which would be off-topic), the discussion would be largely anecdotal and opinion-based, which would also be off-topic.</p>
6845
2018-12-01T09:53:10.207
|discussion|
<p>I don't know where to ask this question. It has to do with electronics and electrical engineering, but only as a tool for learning.</p> <p>What I need are suggestions for a beginning electronics kit for an 8 year old. I know everyone says that their 8 year old is the smartest kid ever, but this isn't my child so I'm good (nephew). He's a smart kid, very intuitive and curious, and I'd like to give him the opportunity to get into electronics. If anyone has any suggestions for kits that I should look at, I'd be very grateful. I'm kind of at a loss as to where I should start him. I think anything with programming is probably out of his pay grade at this point.</p> <p>If this question would be better elsewhere please let me know gently and I'll post it there, and I apologize.</p>
Question about electronics kits as gifts for an 8 years old
<p>I don't want to wade through the edit trail, which is extensive, but it really looks to me like you're slowly adding the info needed to provide an answer, and it's frustrating a user. The user seems a bit grumpy, but certainly not over the top.</p> <p>My bent is to simply ignore such questions, or close vote as "unclear what you're asking"</p> <p>The first frustration, for me, is the long edit trail. It makes it difficult to understand the history of the question. There is no formal policy on this, but if you've gone through three edits and still need to change something, you might consider deleting and starting fresh (or ask a mod to help with deleting). The long edit trail is a pretty clear sign that there is a problem.</p> <p>As near as I can figure out, your main question is "How fast a signal can a motherboard handle?" without even providing information on which motherboard. The user's issue with this is pretty valid. That makes the question underspecced. For all I know, you're talking about a PDP/8. Do you mean "all computers a person is likely to be able to buy today?" Do phones count? Chromebooks? How fast is the motherboard clock?? I suspect that will make a difference.</p> <p>Then, it looks like orbiting around the main question is "how can I program this"? When the whole question has an anchor that's floating around, that can get pretty frustrating to answer. </p> <p>You also really never get around to saying what "combining four fans" means. Are you trying to drive them all with one PWM signal? Are you trying to just AND their Hall Effect outputs together? Are you building a fan control board? Without details like this, this is an XY problem.</p> <p>The best approach for this particular question, for a start at least, would be a question on SU to the effect of "is there a standard for a motherboard fan interface, and where can I find it?" I think that question would float on this stack, too.</p> <p>FWIW, a quick google for 4 wire fan control standard yielded <a href="https://folk.uio.no/kyrrens/diverse/viftekontroller/developer-specs-REV1_2_Public.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://folk.uio.no/kyrrens/diverse/viftekontroller/developer-specs-REV1_2_Public.pdf</a> as a first hit. </p>
6856
2019-01-12T15:10:41.123
|discussion|
<p>Have used StackExchange quite a lot, first time user on the electronics site though. Posted a question where I am after a value:</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/416188/length-of-signal-when-simulating-a-computer-fan-speed-sensor">Length of Signal When Simulating a Computer Fan Speed Sensor</a></p> <p>Seemed to have annoyed Elliot here and can’t see why they’re acting hostile.</p> <p>Ready to eat humble pie if I’m being antagonistic, however this is the only place where this question received this kind of response. Elsewhere we’ve been going through motherboard’s supported maximums and are trying to find a standard.</p> <p>Am I doing something wrong culture-wise on this site?</p>
I’ve obviously rubbed people up the wrong way - no idea how - am I doing something wrong culture-wise on this site?
<p>The linked question does not meet the guidelines if there site or stack exchange. It fails in several ways: it is an opinion question "is it possible" questions automatically make it a matter of opinion. </p> <p>It's too broad, by asking several questions. Questions should be specific, clear, and answerable. Multiple questions could in most cases be asked separately. </p> <p>And as far as being on topic this is a gray area, asking a question about space elevators on a site where most people practice circuit design is probably not wise.</p> <p>The OP has question that they should not have asked per the site guidelines:</p> <blockquote> <p>you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask</a></p> <p>These two questions are opinionated and openended:</p> <blockquote> <p>Is single-line power delivery physically possible at all? Is single-line power delivery practical with probably available technology?</p> </blockquote> <p>That alone would invalidate the question, but the OP asked 5 questions, which is in most cases too many because to sufficiently answer all these questions would take more space and several pages.</p> <p>I would also vote to close this question</p> <p>Furthermore the topic is not really in line with the site guidelines:</p> <blockquote> <p>This site is for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. We ask and answer questions about electrical and electronics engineering topics, which include electronics, physical computing, and those working with microcontrollers, Arduinos and embedded systems. We feel the best Electronics Design questions have a schematic, links to pertinent datasheets or some source code in them, but if your question generally covers …</p> <pre><code>a specific electronics design problem the theory and simulation of electromagnetic forces a communication scheme the writing of firmware for bare-metal or RTOS applications </code></pre> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic</a></p> <p>IMO the topic is too outside the scope of this site, and is not about electrical design. </p> <p>A better way to phrase this question would be "I have material X with Y conductivity, would this be a suitable material to be able to deliver 1MW of power 200km?" That is a design question that can be answered.</p> <p>You have to have 5 votes from different reviewers to open or close a question, so most of the time (not all) an action taken it on a question is correct</p>
6874
2019-02-01T17:11:03.760
|discussion|asking-questions|closed-questions|
<p>I was one of the ones who voted to close this question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/417654/could-single-line-power-transmission-be-used-for-a-space-elevators-climber">Could single-line-power-transmission be used for a space elevator's climber</a> as, at the time it was made, the actual question was not very clear and seemed very broad. I did see a way to redeem it and commented as much.</p> <p>After it was closed the OP revised the question and made it a clear and worthwhile one (in my opinion). However, it is also clear to me that for most EEs the topic might sound like voodoo or perpetual motion. But I can assure you it is not, the principles are well-stablished, well-understood, and in one way or another have been observed at least <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_transmission_line" rel="nofollow noreferrer">since the times of Nikola Tesla</a>. That's part of what makes it a good question, as a means to explore this undeserved bias.</p> <p>I voted to reopen, but the vote got nowhere (the question got edited since then so I cannot vote on it again.)</p> <p>Could someone tell me (and the OP), what is wrong with the current state of the question?</p>
Request to reopen. Peer-pressure or peer-review?
<p>We discourage broad, open-ended questions relating to the reverse engineering, modification and/or repair of devices here on EE.SE because the answer(s) tend to become long strings of unrelated edits and/or comments. While this might help you with your immediate problems, it is of no value to the site overall. We DO allow certain questions about reverse engineering in which you explain in detail what you know about the circuit and then focus on a few points about which you still have doubts.</p>
6876
2019-02-03T22:01:32.217
|discussion|scope|
<p>I have a gaming device I want to ask about repairing and want to make sure I can ask it here</p>
can I ask about how to repair a gaming device
<p>Such questions are on-topic, as long as they are related to electronic design. This includes questions about directives/regulations regarding:</p> <ul> <li>EMC</li> <li>Radio</li> <li>Electrical safety</li> <li>Low-voltage/high-voltage directives</li> <li>Electronic environment, ESD and water protection etc</li> <li>Environmental impact, RoHS, WEEE etc.</li> <li>Domain-specific electronic standards. Maritime, aerospace, automotive, EX zones, military etc.</li> <li>Manufacturing/soldering of electronics in regards to all of the above.</li> </ul>
6878
2019-02-08T09:04:09.353
|discussion|asking-questions|
<p>I am a novice engineer with the task of making CE marked products. Unfortunately I am being lost in directives and often I don't understand which standards and directives apply to my product. I want to get help but it seems that these are too legal to write on electronics.se, and too technical to write on law.se. Can I ask these on electronics.se?</p>
Can I ask about product requirements on European Standards?
<p><strong>Where?</strong> Right on Electronics StackExchange. But rather than re-think the <em>where</em>, perhaps you should re-think the <em>how</em>:</p> <p>I've grown my electronics experience, home lab, and various projects all while using StackExchange to varying degrees. The trick is to have <strong>focused</strong> questions.</p> <p>The question "What safety considerations in setting up a home lab?" can mean a <em>lot</em> of things. ESD safety for components? Electrical safety for the occupant? Fire safety for the home? Safety for your cat that loves to investigate your bench?</p> <p>Break such a question down to constituent parts and really focus on a particular aspect. Say you're building the bench and wondering about whether you should get an ESD mat and connect it to ground. Look for questions that already deal with that topic first, and then if you don't find anything, ask about it.</p> <p>Say you're considering getting a soldering station and wonder whether you should invest in one with various safety features (power-off timer, sleep function, etc.). Again, look for questions that already cover this, and then ask a new question if you don't find what you're looking for.</p> <p>The advantages to this strategy are many:</p> <ul> <li>You help potential users answer your question more quickly, because they can focus on a specific point rather than try to think of all the variables.</li> <li>Your questions address several concerns of a home electronics lab separately and therefore may produce more keywords relevant to those concerns, and thus appear in search results more easily.</li> <li>You could acquire more StackExchange reputation (internet points!) in having multiple (well-written) questions.</li> </ul>
6884
2019-02-15T11:44:57.103
|discussion|asking-questions|on-topic|closed-questions|
<p>I've recently asked a question on EE.SE about setting up a home electronics lab which has been closed for being too broad. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/421221/what-precautions-should-i-take-to-setup-a-home-electronics-lab-living-in-the-u">Original Question</a></p> <p>The default explanation that I've seen for removing these types of questions are along the lines of 'preventing answers/comments becoming discussions' 'keeping the focus of the site to electronics design'</p> <p>However a lot of the discussion these questions create has really useful content. In the case of my question the answer I got before it was closed highlighted things that I hadn't thought of. The question was on topic for electronics design and was generic enough that other people in similar situations to myself would have found answers / comments useful.</p> <p>Closing questions that are so broad they either a. cant be answered or b. aren't useful to anyone else but the author or c. are impossible to answer is fair enough but I've seen a lot that would have been helpful</p> <p>Is there a place these types of questions should / could live?</p> <p>Id further like to add that when closing a question like this it should be necessary to give suggestions / pointers about how the question can be made more specific as many times I've seen questions being closed and the author re-posting a very similar question getting frustrated they cant see how to make it more specific.</p>
Where to ask discussion / advice questions?
<p>This is a <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/07/the-death-of-meta-tags/">meta tag </a>. Searching on it is useless, and it's frowned upon in the stack exchange network</p> <p>Just look at the results of a search for "design review" <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=design+review">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=design+review</a> The hits fall into a few categories.</p> <p>The most common, to me at least, is just plain mediocre questions. There's also a class of good questions that are undertagged, which decreases their value. Many are good questions that have some very good tags, and adding a design review tag probably won't make them better.</p> <p>For example, let's say I'm interested in constructing an rf circuit as a pcb, and I scan for design review questions. </p> <p>Search on "rf" : <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rf">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rf</a> Search on "rf design review": <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=rf+design+review">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=rf+design+review</a> Search on "rf PCB": <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rf+pcb">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/rf+pcb</a></p> <p>The last looks to be the most useful search to me. </p>
6888
2019-02-15T20:48:02.480
|discussion|tags|
<p>Seven years ago, I asked <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2513/2028">whether PCB review questions were on-topic</a>. I think they're generally acceptable when they fit certain guidelines. However, I noticed that we don't seem to have good tags to assign to such questions.</p> <p>We do have a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/review" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;review&#39;" rel="tag">review</a> that that's not used much (18 times). I think its purpose would be similar to the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/identification" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;identification&#39;" rel="tag">identification</a> tag. Therefore, I am checking with the community:</p> <p>Would a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/design-review" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;design-review&#39;" rel="tag">design-review</a> tag would be useful to add for questions seeking a review of the design, whether schematic or PCB?</p>
Proposal of design-review tag
<p>To open the contextual menu on a mobile device, use "double-tap-and-hold", which is a tap followed quickly by a second (long) tap where you continue to hold down until the menu opens.</p>
6890
2019-02-17T01:21:40.970
|support|mathjax|
<p>I was viewing a post on my iPhone (in Safari) which had some MathJax equations, and I accidentally clicked on an equation and opened its MathJax menu: <hr> <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWHDu.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BWHDu.jpg" alt="MathJax menu"></a> <hr> Anyone know how I did that? </p> <p>I can’t seem to find a consistent method to repeat it (though I can get it to open sometimes with a random volley of frustrated taps).</p> <p><strong>Test Equation</strong><br> <span class="math-container">$$\text{Menu}=C_a*T (t_n, t_d) $$</span></p> <p><em>where</em> <span class="math-container">\$C_a\$</span> <em>is the coefficient of annoyance</em>,<br> <span class="math-container">\$T\$</span> <em>is the tap sequence as a function of the number of taps</em> <span class="math-container">\$t_n\$</span>, <em>and the tap delay</em> <span class="math-container">\$t_d\$</span>.</p>
How did I open the MathJax menu in Safari (on iPhone)
<p>There is more info in this reddit thread: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/cablefail/comments/1vdhky/the_great_yellow_wall_more_pics/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.reddit.com/r/cablefail/comments/1vdhky/the_great_yellow_wall_more_pics/</a></p> <p>From "scattyboy": </p> <blockquote> <p>I took these photos along with the original yellow wall in 2000. This was in the Lehman Brothers data center in 3 World Financial Center. In addition to the CAT5 cabling there was so much coax under the floor that the tiles would not lay flat.</p> </blockquote> <p>This seems confirmed by some other source: <a href="https://royal.pingdom.com/the-worst-cable-mess-ever/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://royal.pingdom.com/the-worst-cable-mess-ever/</a></p> <p>User "Bob johnson" says</p> <blockquote> <p>This picture is of Lehman Brothers World Financial Center 3 data center. Pre 9/11 it was the primary Data center, post 9/11 this site was breached by the dust and written off completely. Which was a good thing since there was no other way to fix that mess. Days were lost just trying to trace a single connection. There is a smaller gray version of this wall one of the NJ data centers thats still in use.</p> </blockquote>
6894
2019-02-24T05:19:22.593
|discussion|
<p>Trying to access a page that doesn't exist on this site returns a colorful 404 page. For example, try to access the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/sqrt(-1)">question number <span class="math-container">\$\sqrt{-1}\$</span></a> and you get the 404 page with the image below.</p> <p>I'd really like to know the origin of this image. Is this a computer interconnect architecture? A notable or historic effort? </p> <p>I'm not asking for pure speculation. A google image search shows this image is used in several places for effect (e.g. slide 14 "<a href="https://www.lightcounting.com/Seminar/k.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">The Yellow Wall</a>"), but I haven't been able to track down the original source or a discussion of what is being shown.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/LSfCK.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/LSfCK.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
What is the origin of the image of the massive interconnect on this site's 404 page?
<p>A user vandalizing their own question is common enough. After a question is posted, it's no longer "owned" by the person who posted it so there's no reason to treat an edit from OP different than an edit from someone else.</p> <p>Once a question has been answered it should not be removed unless it's off-topic or breaks any other policy. Stack Exchange's goal is to create a repository of good questions, so the <em>question</em> is the asset here - not the user (I understand that the Corporate Overlords disagree these days, I guess marketing dollars and PR is more important to the business side).</p> <p>In the future, just revert it. IMO, OP does not deserve any slack after such a move and will probably not come back until it's time for the next homework question anyway.</p>
6896
2019-03-01T19:53:08.777
|discussion|editing|
<p>I have seen variations of this a couple of times, but <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/425103/the-opposite-of-the-electronics-question">this particular case</a> is quite blatant.</p> <p>The questioner went from a somewhat reasonably sounding homework question to something that has no context and makes no sense at all.</p> <p>I feel tempted to revert the question one or two versions back, and I would if it had not been the questioner himself that made the changes.</p> <p>What should be done? Prod the questioner to edit it again, or simply revert it?</p>
What to do when questioner edits question into oblivion?
<p>OK, done. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/operational-amplifier" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;operational-amplifier&#39;" rel="tag">operational-amplifier</a> is the master tag, and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/op-amp" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;op-amp&#39;" rel="tag">op-amp</a> is a synonym that maps to it.</p>
6899
2019-03-04T15:47:46.183
|discussion|tags|
<p>I've noticed that some recent questions have been tagged with both <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/op-amp" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;op-amp&#39;" rel="tag">op-amp</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/operational-amplifier" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;operational-amplifier&#39;" rel="tag">operational-amplifier</a> (e.g. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/425157/1">this question</a>). The former seems to be the main tag (it has a tag wiki and over 4 thousand questions) whereas the latter has no tag wiki and only 111 questions.</p> <p>There is no need to have two tags for op amps. I suggest we make these two tags either <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/70718/299342">tag synonyms and/or merge them</a>. Assuming the community agrees, which should be the master tag?</p>
Why do we have an [op-amp] and an [operational-amplifier] tag?
<p>Someone with enough rep created it, and then it got added on by a bunch of new users. I've edited it away. I've also done the same on the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/low" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;low&#39;" rel="tag">low</a> tag.</p>
6901
2019-03-07T22:35:26.583
|support|tags|moderators|
<p>The [high] tag serves no useful purpose and should be deleted.</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/high">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/high</a></p>
Obliterate the "high" tag
<p>Never close duplicates as dupe to a duplicate. Find the highest quality post on the topic and use that one as "canonical duplicate", meaning all dupes should point to that one.</p> <p>Technical quality of the question and answer is all that matters. Keep the highest quality post, which is not necessarily the oldest one.</p> <p>( As a side note, "dupe chains" can be a major pain when (user) moderating. If you have A -> B -> C and then need to delete B for whatever reason, it isn't possible as long as A or other posts link to it as dupe. In order to get rid of B, you would have to find all posts linking to it, then either get rid of those or close them as dupes to some other post (like C). )</p>
6907
2019-03-14T19:03:46.707
|discussion|
<p>Sometimes a question &quot;A&quot; will be closed as a duplicate of question &quot;B&quot;, where &quot;B&quot; is closed as a duplicate of a third question, &quot;C&quot;. Thus the relationship looks like:</p> <p><code>A -&gt; B -&gt; C</code></p> <p>For a concrete example, consider:<br /> A: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/424033/148777">Can I use a single resistor for multiple LED with different +ve sources?</a><br /> B: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/130522/148777">Why do different colored LEDs interfere with each other when connected in parallel?</a><br /> C: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/22291/148777">Why exactly can&#39;t a single resistor be used for many parallel LEDs?</a></p> <p>Is this the commonly accepted way to close duplicates? I understand that Q&amp;A quality, not age, of a question should determine which one is a duplicate of the other. In this case, C clearly has the best Q&amp;A, judging by votes.</p> <p>I can make an argument for any of the following strategies. Perhaps the correct strategy is one of the following, or perhaps there is no one-size-fits-all approach.</p> <h3>1. All other questions (A, B) should be closed as a duplicate of the highest-quality question, C.</h3> <p>This allows other users to clearly tell which question has the best answers at a glance. Users are not directed through a chain of duplicates, where such a chain could be confusing to new users. Finally, this helps collect all the good answers in C.</p> <h3>2. Newest questions (A) should be closed as a duplicate of <em>both</em> B and C.</h3> <p>Navigating to question A gives a link to both B and C. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/426487/148777">Why wierd capacitance values</a> is an example of such a question with multiple duplicate targets. A user is given access to a (potentially) large variety of answers.</p> <h3>3. Keep as-is.</h3> <p>New questions (A) can be marked as duplicate of another duplicate (B). Similarly to argument 2. above, this gives a user access to a variety of potential answers, but in a different manner.</p> <p>Is there a canonical best approach to these duplicates? Or, is there guidance in choosing which one of these approaches fits a given situation?</p>
Should a Question be closed as a duplicate of another duplicate?
<p>The entire purpose of comments is to induce the poster to modify a post (question or answer). You have two options &mdash; either make modifications or don't. Modification could also mean deleting.</p> <p>Don't worry about the comments. Comments that become irrelevant after modification will probably get deleted.</p>
6909
2019-03-15T16:25:33.437
|discussion|
<p>In this <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/427402/how-to-read-the-value-of-this-capacitor/427408?noredirect=1#comment1064143_427408">question</a>, I get a good reaction why the answer is not good, so I want to delete it. However, the persons who made the comments spend some time on it; should I immediately remove the answer or should I let them know to remove it? It feels bad to remove an answer including their comments 'immediately'. </p>
Deleting a bad answer after a remark
<p>Absolutely! If people choose to write answers in comments, that's on them. There's no reason for you not to put the same information into an actual answer.</p>
6916
2019-04-03T19:21:06.853
|discussion|answers|comments|moderation|unanswered-questions|
<p>There are many comments that solve the problem, but the question has no answer. If the comment could make a answer is it ok to make an answer out of it to get rid of old unanswered questions?</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/382782/a-heat-resistant-connection-between-power-supply-and-a-resistive-wire-circuit-h">A heat resistant connection between power supply and a resistive wire circuit (heat grid)</a></p>
May comments be used to answer old unanswered questions?
<p>There's a general rule across SE sites that if someone posts an answer as a comment, it's fair game to turn that into an answer. I think there's even a blog post by Jeff Atwood (SE co-founder) saying it's fine.</p> <p>However, the examples of what you did that Nick Alexeev posted are a terrible way to do it. If you understand a question and answer well enough to turn the comment(s) into a full-blown answer, I'd say that's fine. But simply copying a few different comments into the answer box isn't useful at all. They might be components of a complete answer, but the examples are pretty much incoherent.</p>
6918
2019-04-03T22:31:52.170
|discussion|moderation|
<p>I asked: <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6916/may-comments-be-used-to-answer-old-unanswered-questions">May comments be used to answer old unanswered questions?</a></p> <p>One moderator says yes and the another moderator said no on the old questions answered this way. Should I listen to the moderator with a higher rep.?</p> <p>Side Question? Is it better to have a half answer then no answer to lower unanswered questions?</p>
Which moderator to listen to?
<p>You can also contact them via the comments of any post that they have edited, using <code>@</code>, as it works for editors as well, see <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work">How do comment @replies work?</a></p>
6930
2019-04-29T10:12:41.973
|support|
<p>I regularly review suggested edits. One prolific editor is constantly making the same mistakes in his edits, namely misusing "a" vs. "an" and not understanding that both the "ise" and "ize" word endings can be equally valid.</p> <p>Short of re-editing or rejecting all of his suggested edits what options do I have for giving him feedback on his edits?</p>
Contacting a user for editing feedback
<p>I would strongly encourage EE to follow the procedures used by our sister-site Stack Overflow (SO), since they have tons of experience here. From SO meta:</p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/324070/what-is-the-process-for-tag-removal-burnination">What is the process for tag removal (burnination)?</a></p> <p>Why not adapt their system instead of re-inventing the wheel?</p> <p>They have a special tag "burnination-request" used on meta, to flag candidates for tag removal. The post is then left open for discussion for a while, and if there's reasonable consensus, tag removal can proceed.</p> <p>SO uses two different methods as outlined in the above link, one "small burnination" that can be carried out by high rep users alone, and one that requires moderator assistance.</p> <p>The most important part when doing tag clean-up is to review the question as whole. Is it on-topic in the first place or should it be closed? Are there other problems we should fix while editing? That is, once we've decided to "disturb" the site by editing a lot of old posts, we should make sure to fix as many problems as possible at the same time.</p> <p>Now what SO has but EE lacks, is the luxury of countless high-rep users. Even in specific domains: meaning that clean-ups can even be done by domain experts. We won't have that luxury, so we have to be far less picky about who performs the clean-up. It is probably sufficient if the user has high rep.</p>
6937
2019-05-14T14:17:45.683
|discussion|retagging|
<p>Adjective tags are bad because they generally cannot be used on their own, requiring a noun to define. I found a few examples of such tags which I'd like to clean up.</p> <p><strong>common</strong></p> <p>We currently have 37 questions tagged with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/common" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;common&#39;" rel="tag">common</a>. "Common" is only meaningful when paired with a noun describing <em>what</em> is common: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/common-mode" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;common-mode&#39;" rel="tag">common-mode</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/common-base" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;common-base&#39;" rel="tag">common-base</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/common-ground" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;common-ground&#39;" rel="tag">common-ground</a>, etc. Most of such composite tags already exist.</p> <p><strong>passive</strong></p> <p>There's also <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/passive" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;passive&#39;" rel="tag">passive</a> with 12 questions, which refer to either a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/passive-filter" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;passive-filter&#39;" rel="tag">passive-filter</a> (or, more generally, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/passive-networks" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;passive-networks&#39;" rel="tag">passive-networks</a>), or to NFC tags lacking a power source. Perhaps we need a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/passive-nfc" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;passive-nfc&#39;" rel="tag">passive-nfc</a> tag?</p> <p><strong>stable</strong></p> <p>Another ugly adjective tag is <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stable" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stable&#39;" rel="tag">stable</a>, which hosts 11 questions. Here, I would suggest to replace it with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/stability" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;stability&#39;" rel="tag">stability</a> when the question is about stability in terms of control theory, otherwise simply remove it and add an appropriate tag (e.g. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/voltage-reference" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;voltage-reference&#39;" rel="tag">voltage-reference</a>) if possible.</p> <p><strong>resistive</strong></p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/resistive" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;resistive&#39;" rel="tag">resistive</a> includes 24 questions which almost exclusively refer to resistive load, and eventually to resistive networks or brake resistors. Perhaps we should change that tag to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/resistive-load" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;resistive-load&#39;" rel="tag">resistive-load</a> and remove it where it doesn't apply.</p> <p><strong>inductive / capacitive</strong></p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/inductive" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;inductive&#39;" rel="tag">inductive</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/capacitive" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;capacitive&#39;" rel="tag">capacitive</a> mostly refer to either inductive / capacitive load or inductive / capacitive coupling. However, these tags are quite popular so I expect there will be plenty of exceptions. I suggest we start retagging these questions with appropriate tags such as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/capacitive-coupling" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;capacitive-coupling&#39;" rel="tag">capacitive-coupling</a> and see what remains.</p> <p><strong>linear / non-linear</strong></p> <p>Then there are <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linear" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linear&#39;" rel="tag">linear</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/non-linear" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;non-linear&#39;" rel="tag">non-linear</a> tags. These are more complicated because many more questions are using these tags, and 5 people currently watch <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linear" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linear&#39;" rel="tag">linear</a>. Most of these questions refer to two distinct topics:</p> <ul> <li>linear systems / LDEs</li> <li>linearity as a property of ADCs, amplifiers, etc.</li> </ul> <p>I believe we should retag all questions in the second class with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linearity" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linearity&#39;" rel="tag">linearity</a>, dedicate that tag to the property it names (and make that clear in the description) and eventually change <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linear" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linear&#39;" rel="tag">linear</a> to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/linear-systems" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;linear-systems&#39;" rel="tag">linear-systems</a>. I'm afraid it won't be so simple though, as edge cases will pop up.</p> <p><strong>wireless</strong></p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;wireless&#39;" rel="tag">wireless</a> is a very popular tag, which can as a first approximation be split between wireless communication (which IMO is just a cool name for <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/radio" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;radio&#39;" rel="tag">radio</a>) and wireless power transfer including <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless-charging" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;wireless-charging&#39;" rel="tag">wireless-charging</a>. I think we should eventually change it to <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless-communication" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;wireless-communication&#39;" rel="tag">wireless-communication</a> (and maybe make it synonym with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/radio" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;radio&#39;" rel="tag">radio</a>), but before that questions which are not about communication need to be identified and retagged.</p> <p>I would like to contribute to the cleanup, hopefully without disturbing the site too much. Any advice on how to proceed?</p>
Common adjective tags must go
<p>While most circuits have a "ground" reference, not everything is grounded to Earth. Thus they aren't <em>necessarily</em> synonymous. </p> <p>Common bench power supplies may have both "ground" (-) and "Earth" (green) jacks, but coupling them may be optional, since they are not the same thing.</p> <p>Maybe that's not enough to keep the tags separate though...</p>
6940
2019-05-17T16:28:27.977
|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms|
<p>We have several tags that are synonymous: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ground" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;ground&#39;" rel="tag">ground</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/grounding" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;grounding&#39;" rel="tag">grounding</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/earthing" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;earthing&#39;" rel="tag">earthing</a>. At the least we should roll <code>grounding</code> and <code>earthing</code> into the same tag. What do you think?</p>
What is with the ground tags?
<p><strong>When a question should be <em>closed</em> (and down-voted)</strong> </p> <p>If it doesn't live up to the quality criteria described here:<br> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic</a><br> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask</a> </p> <p>This means that questions have to be specific, on-topic, narrow, reasonably researched/trouble-shooted in advance. And it has to be a question, not just a random statement. </p> <p>Questions asking for recommendations of components, places to buy, tools, libraries and other off-site resources are off-topic.</p> <p>Questions asking for help with homework must demonstrate research effort and be specific, with schematics, calculations or source code provided if needed.</p> <p>Questions requiring readers to go through lots of off-site resources may be closed too, on case-to-case basis. Schematics, pictures and source code should be posted on-site, not through a link. Links to external datasheets are however fine and encouraged.</p> <p>When a question is closed, it is first put "on hold", to give the OP a chance to fix it. After a while, the status automatically turns closed and then it may eventually get deleted.</p> <p><strong>When a question should be down-voted (but not closed)</strong></p> <p>If a question shouldn't be closed, but lacks in quality, it should be down-voted. This is a bit subjective but the purpose of down-voting is to encourage the OP to improve the post.</p> <p>If some things are unclear or contradicting, if the question is sloppily formatted or hard to read for whatever reason. Etc. Things that make it bad, but not bad enough to warrant closing.</p> <p><strong>When an answer should be down-voted</strong></p> <p>Same quality criteria as for questions, if things are unclear. Technically incorrect or unhelpful answers should be down-voted.</p> <hr> <p>It is polite but not required to:</p> <ul> <li>Leave a comment when you down-vote. Constructively explain what you don't understand and what needs to be clarified or fixed. I would recommend to <em>not</em> write "I downvoted because...", since that only tends to create drama.</li> <li>Re-visit a post you have down-voted and see if changes have been made to it, then undo the down-vote.</li> <li>Delete any previous comment you have made if the problem you pointed out has been fixed, to reduce clutter.</li> </ul>
6942
2019-05-19T01:41:28.173
|discussion|
<p>I don't see any guidelines for down-votes. I thought that they should be reserved for answers that are wrong or misleading, not for correct answers that maybe aren't quite as good as others. Am I wrong?</p>
Guidelines for down-votes
<p>I think it looked funny to me, and so I rejected the edit then continued to edit it. As I continued to look at it, it looked fine, so I canceled the rejection. Apparently the system doesn't like that. </p> <p>I can't follow what happened because of the changes to the edit stream. I'll be a little more careful next time. </p>
6951
2019-06-01T01:07:35.537
|discussion|editing|
<p>Normally I can understand why edits were rejected, but in this case I can't. Just out of interest, why was this <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/224629">suggested edit rejected</a>?</p> <p>Maybe it is a matter of taste, but in my mind the edits improved the post's presentation:</p> <ul> <li>Inlined link with the title of the article, rather than a raw URL</li> <li>Use of blockquote formatting for the quote text, of which most of the answer consisted.</li> </ul> <p>Admittedly I could have tidied the units, with non-breaking spaces, but as it was quoted text, then that would have been incorrect, IMHO.</p> <p>Am I missing something obvious?</p>
Rejected blockquote suggested edit
<p>It shouldn't have been. Migration should only happen when something is OFF TOPIC HERE, and on topic there. This is clearly an on topic Electrical Engineering question. The mod who migrated it single-handedly does this to any question that even mentions a car, arduino, or raspberry pi to those other stack exchange sites.</p> <p>Flagged for migration review by Mechanics mods.</p> <p>Update: The question has been closed on Mechanics as Migration Rejected. It can be voted to reopen here now.</p> <p>Further update: The question has been reopened <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/442720/38335">here</a>.</p>
6959
2019-06-12T06:34:48.333
|discussion|migration|moderators|
<p>This post was just migrated to the car mechanics site:</p> <p><a href="https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/67998/detect-if-a-can-node-is-transmitting-or-receiving">https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/67998/detect-if-a-can-node-is-transmitting-or-receiving</a></p> <p>Why?</p> <p>It is a 100% electronics question and has absolutely nothing to do with cars at all. Car mechanics can't answer questions about the behavior of CAN transceivers or about line impedance. </p>
Why was this post migrated to mechanics.se?
<p>From the OP's requests in comments and chat, they wanted to remove the original images from the question. They had stated they would be in legal trouble if they could not.</p> <p>They clearly wanted to delete the question, but you can't delete your own question when it has upvoted answers. Unsure how to contact a mod to remove the question, they resorted to vandalizing the post (repeatedly). Chalk it up to a mixture of unfamiliarity with the site and posting something they shouldn't have (or believed they shouldn't have).</p> <p>It sounds like they spoke to the site mods and/or SE staff to resolve. They were given one last attempt to remove the offending information without rendering the question unanswerable, and did so <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/442521/17">here</a>. The whole debacle should be over, now. </p>
6962
2019-06-13T14:34:14.290
|discussion|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/442521/revisions">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/442521/revisions</a> ????</p> <p>The author is CONSTANTLY vandalizing his own post so a to make it unintelligible, with other users trying to save it. It's been locked, unlocked, deleted, and undeleted by divine intervention.</p> <p>I'm downvoting, because I'm petty and pissed, especially about the useless intervention from on high, and will vote to delete if the option ever appears to me. If it gets edited back to remove the figure, I'm flagging it as vandalism, and I suggests everybody do the same.</p> <p>If the author has a reason to delete the figures, perhaps he should request deletion of the question, or reword it to make it understandable.</p>
What's going on with this question?
<p>The edit privilege is given after you gain a certain amount of <em>trust</em>, because it's a rough measure of how involved in the site you are. SE doesn't want people simply editing, they want people to answer and ask questions. Another reason for this is it takes a certain level of knowledge of the topic of the site to earn 2000 rep. You will also notice that the rep system and badge system are to help you to learn how to contribute in many different ways.</p> <blockquote> <p>We believe in the power of community editing. That means once you've generated enough reputation, we trust you to edit anything in the system without it going through peer review. Not just your posts—anyone's posts!</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit">https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/edit</a></p> <p>If you're making a change to the system, you also need to consider the negative aspects of the change. Making the edit privilege easier to obtain would make new users, trolls or bots more able to earn the editing privilege and abuse the system, if it were only up to a 25 of edits to earn the privilege, it would also be easy for someone to create an account, roll through 25 edits and use the edit system for evil purposes. The edit rep limit is in place for a reason, the bar is set high, the limit prevents abuse, not only on this site but on all of SE.</p> <p>Secondly, to get this changed, it would need to be changed not only on this site, but on all sites, and there would have to be very good reasons to make a change like this, and convince SE. </p>
6977
2019-06-24T13:16:02.283
|discussion|feature-request|
<p>I review the edit queue. Part of my review procedure is if edit is done by user g or user p tick accept. Although these users do not have the reputation to edit without review they have consistently improved posts with a better use of English, formatting style and attention to detail than I can ever do.</p> <p>I appreciate that trying to make changes to the SE system is like trying to push water uphill but in this case I think there is room for change. If for instance you make 25 edits in a row all accepted it would streamline things on the site if you were given edit privileges. A reputation bonus would be nice too to compensate for the failure to gain reputation when edits are approved and would encourage editing and good editing behavior.</p> <p>Reputation higher than 2000 does not particularly make you a good editor. Judgement should be made on success at the specific behavior which is what I am proposing.</p>
Earning edit privelge
<p>My view is that asking about <em>concepts</em> of electrical engineering are on-topic. For example, one could ask how a capacitor functions, with no other context. It should be on-topic as a means to cover topics that are "the basics." Without this tenet, all questions would necessarily have to include some sort of engineering project or goal, which is certainly not always the case.</p> <p>Electrical safety is a necessary topic that involves understanding the physics of electrical systems. If we (as a community) can provide resources to help others understand how they function, and how to be safe about it, then I consider that worth keeping on-topic.</p> <p>Some examples:</p> <ul> <li>Not safety-related, but certainly conceptual: <strong><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/50976/2028">What exactly is voltage?</a></strong></li> <li>Conceptual <em>and</em> safety-related: <strong><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/17354/2028">How does earthing work when earth is dry?</a></strong></li> <li>A similar safety question: <strong><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/431388/2028">Does a dangling wire really electrocute me if I&#39;m standing in water?</a></strong></li> </ul> <p>There may be a fuzzy line between someone asking a safety question with good intentions and someone asking with a different motive (sensationalism; a clearly unsafe project; or malicious purpose). The site's community-based moderation is a relatively good mechanism to reject the latter.</p>
6980
2019-06-27T20:36:33.607
|discussion|close-reasons|down-votes|off-topic|
<p>Sometimes, there are questions bluntly in the order of "What happens when I stick a nail into wall socket while holding it?"</p> <ul> <li>does-this-strategy-for-crossing-electrified-water-work <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6923/how-can-we-justify-such-disparity-in-closing-downvoting-questions">deleted</a></li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/431388/does-a-dangling-wire-really-electrocute-me-if-im-standing-in-water">Does a dangling wire really electrocute me if I&#39;m standing in water?</a></li> <li><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/445729/live-wire-and-ground-question">Live wire and ground question</a> (this question triggered me asking on meta)</li> </ul> <p>One could argue these questions concern electrical safety, which is an inherent part of electrical engineering.<br> However, in most of those questions, I <em>only</em> see the safety related part, without the covering <em>engineering</em> part. I feel some of those questions<sup>(1)</sup> are more sensation related than EE related.</p> <p><strong>So, I wondered: What is the policy regarding safety questions <em>without covering engineering case/problem/schematic</em>?</strong></p> <p>(I exclude questions related to X1/Y1 caps, how to explain safety related standards, etc)</p> <p><sup>(1)</sup> in general, not specific refering to linked questions above</p>
What's our policy regarding safety related issues without engineering context?
<p>Just because a moderator does not ultimately affirm a flag, it does not mean that you shouldn't have raised it.</p> <p>In this case, I reviewed the flag, and decided that the fact that it was a self-answer was enough of an extenuating circumstance to allow the answer to stand as-is.</p> <p>Of course, any edits that improve on the answer would be welcome.</p>
6993
2019-07-21T17:04:15.060
|discussion|flagging|not-an-answer|
<p>I'm talking about <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/316292/72179">this</a> answer which says:</p> <blockquote> <p>The link below explains the default rated (180VA) receptacles. [link]</p> </blockquote> <p>I see no difference between this one and the canonical <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225370/your-answer-is-in-another-castle-when-is-an-answer-not-an-answer">"i think you should take The tutorial HERE"</a>. Without the link, there is no single fact mentioned in the answer which helps the user with their question.</p> <p>Have I perhaps overlooked something?</p>
Was I wrong flagging this as not an answer?
<p>There are a few things you can do:</p> <ul> <li><p>Edit the question if the question can be made on topic, many questions don't have a question or the right question.</p></li> <li><p>Comment to the OP to correct their question (in a nice way)</p></li> </ul> <p>Closing a question is a way for people to correct their questions, the site even shows how this is to be done. The people that have a valid question, and don't mind doing a little work to correct their question, will correct it and re-open it.</p> <p>The moderation system can reopen the question. If it's a valid on-topic question, most moderators will have no problem re-opening the question. </p>
6995
2019-07-25T08:02:26.063
|discussion|closed-questions|off-topic|
<p>Is it a good idea to immediately slap on the wrist and close questions? Or would it not be better to guide people in the right direction?</p> <ul> <li><p>Take this question for example: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/450022/161621">How to evaluate the reliability of a PCB-printing service?</a> I find the OP had legitimate concerns and wanted to have some feedback from other (probably more experienced) people about the general process.</p> <ol> <li><p>I understand recommendations are considered off topic. But what is of greater worth? Guide someone in the right direction? Or slap him immediately on the wrist, close his question and send him into the woods.</p></li> <li><p>Compare for example the above question which is of real world practical concern with this highly upvoted and purely theoretical and borderline philosophical question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/158778/can-a-bird-previously-at-earth-potential-get-electrocuted-by-landing-on-a-powe">Can a bird, previously at earth potential, get electrocuted by landing on a powerline at high-enough voltage due to the initial &quot;equalization charge&quot;?</a></p></li> <li><p>I might be wrong but engineering has always been about providing practical solutions to real problems. Physicists can indulge themselves in theoretical debates of the kind in the 2nd question.</p></li> <li><p>I see no comments, no feedback, nothing for the OP to go on, so that he may have had a chance to improve his post.</p></li> </ol></li> </ul> <p>Or am I wrong?</p>
Is it a good idea to immediately slap on the wrist and close questions?
<blockquote> <p>Is this at all a sensible thing to do, as community member?</p> </blockquote> <p>No. You accuse Op of being rude multiple times, of wasting "multiple expert's time", of being entitled, snark and sarcasm as if OP should have known better. This site does not work on "if you have to ask, don't", and at the point where you feel entitled to insult someone for the crime of not seeing things your way, who do you think is the real problem?</p>
7000
2019-07-25T21:50:11.143
|discussion|users|
<p>I must admit that I felt a bit offended by a specific user's attitude towards people trying to answer his question.</p> <p>I also realize he mentioned that it's not the first time people helped him (and he didn't want their opinions), but his profile shows no prior questions. Strangely, I feel like I've interacted with him before. I might really be mistaken about that, and I frankly don't want to know; I think it's both better for my mood and him if I just choose to privately ignore him in the future.</p> <p>I don't think he's commited a "bannable" offense, or anything that needs third-party rectification. I just have a desire to choose not to interact with him.</p> <ul> <li>Are there any integrated or off-side tools to hide his questions in the future? A userscript, maybe? I don't want to carry a piece of paper with a list of people whose questions I won't read around with me ;)</li> <li>Is this at all a sensible thing to do, as community member?</li> </ul> <p>nb: I'm back later, but have decided to catch some sleep now, as I'll probably be less grumpy than I am now.</p> <p>(note that I'm adding references to the interaction in question not to accuse the asker, but to clarify what kind of feelings I'm trying to avoid having to choose to either ignore or express. I would value your input on how to manage these feelings, but I'd guess that would justify asking a separate question.)</p>
Is there a way to ignore specific user's questions?
<p>Yes, you were right to flag this. </p> <p>Note that the system prevents users from deleting their questions if there are any upvoted answers. The reasoning for this is that it is removing another user's (your) content.</p>
7004
2019-07-27T11:17:13.750
|discussion|new-users|
<p>A new user just asked this some minutes ago:</p> <blockquote> <p>As of now most of the negative feedback systems I have encountered have a feedback factor that is less than 1 but positive. However in some situations it seems the system can behave as positive feedback if the feedback factor is not negative.. I just don't seem to comprehend how this negative attenuation is accomplished just using resistive networks.. Ones I have used till now in my studies.</p> </blockquote> <p>I happened to be online and answered the following:</p> <blockquote> <p>There are some reasons why this can happen, and in fact happen all the time: </p> <p>1 The output signal polarity may be reversed (or have enough phase shift) due to the plant transfer function. When you take a sample of this signal you can feed it back to the input directly because it already is negative feedback. </p> <p>2 If the plant transfer function doesn't reverse polarity, then the injection point of the feedback at the input may reverse it instead, thus having the same effect. That's the reason why we use the negative input of opamps for feeding back the output, for example. </p> <p>These situations are effectively equivalent to what you call "negative attenuation" and are used extensively in amplifier design, etc.</p> </blockquote> <p>Two other users commented on his question post, too.</p> <p>Then he briefly accepted the answer, then unaccepted it, then deleted the question. I don't know why, maybe he felt embarrassed... who knows. I browsed back to the deleted post and then raised a flag requiring moderator intervention. This is what I've said to them:</p> <blockquote> <p>This new user has asked an interesting question that might be useful for future users, but once he's got an answer then he has deleted the question. I found this to be disrespectful both for future users that might have a similar question, but also for those who took the time to read, comment and answer to the question. Should the question be undeleted and protected from user vandalisation?</p> </blockquote> <p><strong>My question is:</strong> Was I right to raise the moderation flag, or it's just a waste of time? Do we, as a community, try to recover questions from their vandalising OPs because they belong to the site? Or it's just a fact of life that OPs can do whatever they want with their question, ignoring future users and efforts from those who answered?</p> <p>I want to know just in case this happens to me again, not to bother moderators without a valid reason.</p> <p><strong>Update:</strong> It looks like <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/450371/">the question</a> has been undeleted, upvoted and accepted. Go figure. :)</p>
Newbie asks question, gets answer, deletes question immediately afterwards
<p>Usually, tags like this are created by people typing in words in the "tags" field and hoping for the best. </p> <p>The low usage indicates that we do not need a tag for any of these, it would be better to use larger categories such as <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/motor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;motor&#39;" rel="tag">motor</a> or <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/brushed-dc-motor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;brushed-dc-motor&#39;" rel="tag">brushed-dc-motor</a>. Just edit as needed to get rid of the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent&#39;" rel="tag">permanent</a> tag, and then the tag will be automatically deleted when there are no tagged questions left.</p>
7009
2019-07-30T15:37:04.983
|discussion|tags|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent&#39;" rel="tag">permanent</a></p> <p>It has apparently been used on only 5 questions. Two are for permanent-magnet motors and generators and one for a permanent-split-capacitor (PSC) motor.</p> <p>I would be inclined to create <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent-magnet-motor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent-magnet-motor&#39;" rel="tag">permanent-magnet-motor</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent-magnet-generator" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent-magnet-generator&#39;" rel="tag">permanent-magnet-generator</a> tags. A single <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent-magnet-machine" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent-magnet-machine&#39;" rel="tag">permanent-magnet-machine</a> tag might be better, but some people might not recognize it as meaning either a motor or a generator.</p> <p>Would a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/permanent-split-capacitor-motor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;permanent-split-capacitor-motor&#39;" rel="tag">permanent-split-capacitor-motor</a> tag be too unwieldy? I suppose that anyone who would be looking for that might be just as likely to look for <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/psc-motor" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;psc-motor&#39;" rel="tag">psc-motor</a>. Perhaps the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/single-phase" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;single-phase&#39;" rel="tag">single-phase</a> tag is all that is really needed, leaving the asker to give the sub-type as part of the description.</p>
How should the [permanent] tag be eliminated?
<h3>Phew! All done!</h3> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BjFVE.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BjFVE.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Manually changed every link, and did some very minor cleaning on the respective answers (and sometimes the questions, while they were already bounced to the front page).</p> <p>Also got me the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/badges/75/archaeologist"><em>Archaeologist</em></a> badge:</p> <blockquote> <p>Edit 100 posts that were inactive for 6 months.</p> </blockquote>
7026
2019-08-06T18:12:43.890
|support|hyperlinks|
<p>The excellent <a href="http://sound-au.com/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Audio Pages</a> by Rod Elliott had to move to a new hosting company, and the URL had to change with the move.</p> <blockquote> <p>Despite 18 years of use, Westhost doesn't value their long-term customers, so we will be parting ways.</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm sure some of you have noticed that I have already updated the previous URL <code>http://sound.whsites.net</code> to the new <code>https://sound-au.com</code> manually over a few days, trying not to flood the front page. I did this because the automatic redirect will likely disappear in a year or so.</p> <p>There are however still 87 posts containing the <em>old</em>-old URL: <code>http://sound.westhost.com</code>. This URL does not redirect anymore, and thus these links are broken but easily repaired by doing a search-and-replace <code>http://sound.westhost.com</code> to <code>https://sound-au.com</code>. The rest of the URL has not changed.</p> <p>Is it possible for a diamond-mod to do such changes in bulk, or is there a bot that can do it? Otherwise I will do them manually over the next weeks.</p> <p>The related "main" meta question <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/193591/bulk-change-hyperlinks">Bulk change hyperlinks</a> tells me that it was not possible as of 2013, but I thought I could ask a more specific question here after 6 years of development, and this also serves as a "heads up" to let people know I'll be changing things.</p>
I want to bulk-edit a domain change for Rod Elliott's Audio Pages
<p>Done. And the comments and answers based on the misreading have been cleaned up.</p>
7037
2019-08-27T09:47:43.707
|discussion|editing|
<p>It turns out that the part in the question <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/454778/generating-negative-voltage-rail-using-7805">Generating negative voltage rail using 7805</a> is a <strong>P</strong>7805, which is a DC-to-DC converter, not a linear voltage regulator.</p> <p>I notice that no-one has changed the part number in the question's title - is that deliberate or just that no-one's done it yet? (I know I've missed editing a title elsewhere lots of times when editing the body of a question.)</p>
Should the 7805 part number in the title be corrected?
<p>So looking at the question, I think it's on-topic, but it's <em>subjective and hypothetical</em>. The main reason I see it as hypothetical is because you are asking about a trade group's goals, not necessarily about enacted legislation. A similar hypothetical is "What if PETA had their entire agenda implemented in law?". </p> <p>See the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">help center</a> for further guidance.</p>
7039
2019-08-29T01:12:51.890
|discussion|
<p>I've asked the following question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/454396/199402">How would 'Electronics Right-to-Repair' legislation affect Electrical Design?</a></p> <p>When I posted this I felt it was extremely applicable to electrical design. My intention was to find out what types of technical design changes would need to occur in order to accommodate this law. I thought this <em>should</em> be a fairly un-opinionated question with citation to IEEE or other design standards. I'm not looking to start a debate or open a forum question.</p> <p>However, I received a pretty mixed opinion on the question. It was put on-hold almost immediately, and still is, but it is currently sitting with 4 up-votes, 4 votes to reopen, 1 vote to delete. One user thinks it is extremely appropriate, the other thinks it is completely off-topic. So I'm lost, is it on topic or not? I have read the help page but I get stuck on the fact that it uses words like <em>feel</em> and <em>generally</em> to describe appropriate questions.</p> <p>I tried narrowing the question down to just the fifth point in order to make the question less broad but I'm not sure where to go from here. Do I edit the question further and try to salvage it, does it need more (or less) context, or do I just vote to close it myself? I don't care much whether is stays open or gets closed at this point but I am looking for an opinion from the community and to educate myself further about EE.SE.</p>
What to do with my question on Right-to-Repair?
<p>The question, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/454699/1">as originally asked</a>, was clearly based on a fundamental misconception. (The original question title was "Why is adding AC power is easier than adding DC power?") The answer you refer to corrects that misconception, and is thus a valid answer to the question as originally asked. In fact, it's arguably the <em>only</em> answer the original question needed — the other answers just went off on various tangents.</p> <p>However, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/454699/timeline">after that and several other answers were posted</a>, the question title was <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/posts/454699/revisions">edited</a> (by a person other than the OP) into something quite different (and more in line with the assumed question the currently top-voted answers are answering). As a side effect, any earlier answers that <em>didn't</em> go off on tangents about the internals of grid-tie inverters were seemingly invalidated by the edit, at least if you're mainly focusing on the title. (The question body does still include some evidence the OP's original misunderstanding, if you read all of it.)</p> <p>The legitimacy of editing questions in ways that invalidate existing answers <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/179215/edited-question-makes-answers-incorrect">can be</a> and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/286803/change-to-question-invalidates-my-answer-what-to-do">has been</a> debated in various places. My personal opinion is that it's situational, and that one needs to always consider whether the advantages (get a better question, hopefully invite better and more focused answers, possibly avoid the question getting closed) outweigh the disadvantages (put words in the OP's mouth and possibly piss them off, screw over folks who spent time answering the original question in good faith, maybe end up with answers that the OP doesn't want, need or understand). In any case, it's already been done here, and at least so far nobody's reverted it.</p> <p>In the mean time, it looks like the question has since then been closed as unclear, the OP has <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/454705">accepted an answer</a> that <em>sort of</em> answers both their original question and the edited version, the author of the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/454800">top-voted competing answer</a> is about to get <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/badges/49/populist">a gold badge</a>, and the answer you flagged has now been deleted by its author. In short, it's all a big mess. Whether it's a bigger mess than if the question had <em>not</em> been edited is anyone's guess. Anyway, maybe someone will edit the question further and get it reopened, or maybe this is how it will stay. Who knows?</p>
7041
2019-08-29T18:48:33.267
|discussion|flagging|
<p>I recently stumbled on <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/454699/how-do-solar-inverter-systems-easily-add-ac-power-sources-together">this question</a> and among the answers I found <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/454702/29434">this one</a> from an high rep user AND a moderator.</p> <p>Although there is nothing wrong in the content of the "answer", it is <em>clearly</em> not an answer according to our standards, but just a comment.</p> <p>It simply states:</p> <blockquote> <p>It takes a lot of technology to make that possible. A grid-tied inverter is significantly more complex than an off-grid inverter.</p> </blockquote> <p>Hep! That first sentence could be used as a reply to more than half the questions posted on EE.SE! And the second sentence barely dismiss the question as "too difficult to explain", without even attempting at answering the actual question, which is about <strong><em>how</em></strong> a grid-tied inverter is able to do so.</p> <p>The fact that the question was answerable in a highly professional way is demonstrated by the very good answers that have been posted in that thread, so I hope there is no one arguing the "answer" I flagged was the only meaningful way to answer the OP.</p> <p>Therefore I flagged the post accordingly as "not an answer" and then, to my utmost surprise I got <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/flag-summary/29434">this notice on my flag summary page</a> (yellow emphasis mine):</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/2lC1x.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/2lC1x.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>I really think the mod reviewing the flag has done a mistake. How on earth could that "answer" be considered otherwise than an insightful comment? </p> <p>Otherwise I could be well go hunting for random questions and posting a canned answer on the following lines:</p> <p><em>It takes a lot of technology to make that possible. A [thingy named X cited in the question] is significantly more complex than an [thingy named Y somewhat related to X].</em></p> <p>and see how many rep points I can reap, just for fun!</p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>Since an answer and relative comments made me think that maybe I wasn't completely clear, I'll try to reformulate my objections:</p> <ol> <li><p>The original question was comprehensible, on-topic and answerable in our format.</p></li> <li><p>Any answer posted on any SE site must </p> <p>a. attempt to answer the question</p> <p>b. stand on its own feet (no link-only answers, cryptic statement with no explanations, etc.)</p> <p>c. provide information to the community, <em>regardless of whether the user asking the question understands it or not</em> </p></li> <li><p>The above conditions in point 2 are to be met by an answer, <strong><em>regardless of the quality of the question</em></strong>. A bad question doesn't make a bad answer good!</p></li> </ol> <p>Even if the question was poor or had problems, this doesn't authorize a user to post low-quality answers. The problem I see with the answer I pointed out is exacerbated by the fact that it was posted by high-rep user which is also a moderator, who should know the rules and help enforce them.</p> <p><strong>Note:</strong> I'm not particularly upset because that answer was posted. People (mods included) can do mistakes. </p> <p>On the other hand, I'm almost pissed-off <strong><em>by the flag rejection</em></strong>. Whoever handled that flag completely ignored the SE guidelines on what constitutes an answer. And this is still worse given that our site is notorious for having a harsher moderation policy. </p> <p>Moreover, that answer will give other users a really bad example. They could point to that and justify any silly answer they could give with "See. A mod did it, so it's good practice!". </p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p> <p>It has been brought to my attention by a comment by user <code>Ilmari Karonen</code> (posted on the meta-answer of user <code>Pipe</code>) that the title of the question was changed <strong><em>after</em></strong> the answer we are discussing about was posted.</p> <p>I <em>did</em> notice the question was edited, <em>but</em> I didn't notice the editing involved its title. That's a reminder to myself to check the editing log <em>more thoroughly</em>! My bad!</p> <p>With the question's original title that answer was more justifiable, even if not great, since the question was really more blurry.</p> <p>I still stand by my opinion regarding the objections raised by other meta-answers: if originally the title were really what appears now, that answer would amount as "not attempting at an answer", IMO.</p> <p>Anyway, the point is now moot since the poster deleted his answer (kudos to Dave Tweed for recognizing it turned out not be an acceptable post, even if it marginally was when it was posted).</p> <p>If Ilmari Karonen reposted his comment as an answer, I'd accept that.</p> <p><strong>PROBLEM SOLVED</strong></p>
Why on earth was this flag on this answer of a moderator rejected?
<p>No, career and class questions you want to ask about are not on topic on the main site. You could try the <a href="https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/15/electrical-engineering">EE.SE chat room</a> .</p>
7045
2019-09-05T03:29:44.113
|discussion|asking-questions|
<p>Is this a valid question for the EE exchange? “I’m an EE student who’s minoring in math and am curious about what upper division math classes will be beneficial to me in the industry and/or graduate school. If I go to graduate school I will most likely follow the controls path.”</p>
Can I ask this in the EE parent site?
<p>It's on topic at the respective company's customer support.</p>
7049
2019-09-13T23:05:55.380
|support|asking-questions|
<p>I am having a problem pairing a beats headphone with my Samsung TV. It worked a couple of months ago, I lent them to my son who used them with different devices and now the TV doesn't see them. No problem with my Mac or iPhone. Where is this on-topic?</p>
Where is question about pairing headphone to TV on topic?
<p>If you edit the post, then you can edit the schematic.</p> <p>That's what the reference to "preview" means &mdash; you only get a preview window while you're in the process of editing the post containing the schematic.</p>
7057
2019-10-01T22:39:04.147
|bug|
<p>If I remember right, there used to be an edit button on the schematic. The schematic html section says there is one. I can't find it, I remember it being next to the simulate this circuit link.</p> <pre><code>&lt;!-- Begin schematic: In order to preserve an editable schematic, please don't edit this section directly. Click the "edit" link below the image in the preview instead. --&gt; ![schematic](https://i.stack.imgur.com/[not relavant].png) &lt;!-- End schematic --&gt; </code></pre> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/B6w77.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/B6w77.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Anyway, one needs to change or the other, we shouldn't tell people something is there when it is not. </p>
Where is the edit button on the schematic circuit lab tool?
<p>I would agree; many of the questions tagged would be covered by the <code>reverse-polarity</code>tag <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reverse-polarity">latest questions tagged with reverse-polarity</a>.</p> <p>The first question in the latest for <code>reverse</code> is asking about a <em>reversing light circuit on a car</em>. How that adds any value to the question is beyond me.</p> <p>The term reverse covers such a broad range that a proper definition would appear to be impossible and that being the case it adds no value (but does clutter the tags with a meaningless entry from my perspective)</p>
7072
2019-10-29T19:45:31.130
|discussion|support|tags|moderation|
<p>The <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reverse" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;reverse&#39;" rel="tag">reverse</a> tag is very meta, covers several categories. I nominate it to go away. </p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reverse">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reverse</a></p>
Nix the reverse tag
<p>A reason for including transformers in the electric machinery category is that they are included in electric machinery textbooks. A good knowledge of transformers is required for learning about electric motors. The heart of the circuit model for an induction motor is a transformer.</p> <p>A reason for not including it is that this is not a text book and using that tag is not all that likely to be helpful. Most people searching with that tag are not likely to be looking for questions about transformers.</p> <p>I would be inclined to delete transformers from the tag.</p> <p>From Wikipedia:</p> <blockquote> <p>Other electromagnetic machines include the Amplidyne, Synchro, Metadyne, Eddy current clutch, Eddy current brake, Eddy current dynamometer, Hysteresis dynamometer, Rotary converter, and Ward Leonard set. A rotary converter is a combination of machines that act as a mechanical rectifier, inverter or frequency converter. The Ward Leonard set is a combination of machines used to provide speed control. Other machine combinations include the Kraemer and Scherbius systems.</p> </blockquote> <p>There are electrostatic motor and generators, but I don't know of other electrostatic machines.</p>
7077
2019-11-14T18:13:40.137
|discussion|tags|
<p>From the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/electric-machine/info">tag info</a> (highlight mine):</p> <blockquote> <p>Electrical Machines are Electro-Mechanical energy converters. They maybe classified into motors (electrical -> mechanical), generators (mechanical -> electrical) <strong>and transformers (electrical -> electrical)</strong>.</p> </blockquote> <p>The inclusion of "resting" magneto-electric devices in that category is imho controversial, but that's not the point:</p> <p>Since transformers are significantly different from motors and generators, a tag covering all three feels less helpful:</p> <p>Whilst you cannot, without knowing the direction of power flow, tell whether a specific machine is a generator or a motor at any point in time, so it's helpful to have a general tag for both. </p> <p>A transformer is a transformer, and no (intended) mode of operation changes that¹.</p> <p>Since someone asking about a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/transformer" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;transformer&#39;" rel="tag">transformer</a> is likely to use that tag, shouldn't we exclude that usage from the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/electric-machine" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;electric-machine&#39;" rel="tag">electric-machine</a> tag description?</p> <p><hr> ¹ could of course also be an electrical bonfire.</p>
Should the [tag:electric-machine] tag really cover transformers?
<p>We do this all the time in chat. You can ping any user, and provide a link to the question. Users are free to ignore this, so don't abuse it. If you get no response, don't go begging for a response.</p>
7078
2019-11-19T19:29:17.893
|discussion|feature-request|
<p>Currently, we can mention a user using '@' under comments, only if he/she has already commented in that thread. Why our Stack Exchange doesn't allow one to mention any other users in comments so that he/she gets attention of the question or discussion? Particularly, if somebody wants to get attention of a person who has more expertise in that topic?</p>
Mentioning a particular user
<p>The "highly active" term has now replaced the "protected" term, but the principle is the same: these are questions that have been specifically marked by moderators to prevent new users with very low reputation to answer.</p> <p>It is typically used for questions that get viral (due to the Hot Network Question list, or some tweet - hence "highly active"), so that people that aren't quite aware of the site rules don't pile in just to answer things like "great question", or "I experience this too", or some other kind of noise or spam.</p> <p>Recently, the post notices for closed/protected/locked/deleted posts have been refactored by the SE team. So now, the "protected" term has been deprecated in favor of "highly active". It is possible that these questions aren't actually highly active anymore, but at some point, they have been. And they are still in that state where low rep users can't answer.</p> <p>There is more details about the significance of this statuts on the main meta: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52764/what-is-a-protected-or-highly-active-question">What is a “protected” or &quot;highly active&quot; question?</a></p> <p>Also, see this post about the refactoring of post notices: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/339700/new-post-notices-are-live-network-wide">New Post Notices are live network-wide</a>. <strong>And have a look at <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/339709/325443">pkamb's answer there</a>, which summarizes pretty well how this new "highly active" notice is, indeed, very misleading.</strong></p>
7090
2019-12-18T11:50:00.323
|bug|
<p>I've encountered multiple questions that are marked as being highly active and requiring a higher reputation to answer. The only problem is that some(or maybe most, I did not keep track) of them last had activity years ago.<br> As an example <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/62395/gps-design-review-rf-input?rq=1">this question</a> was asked and last active over 6.5 years ago, Highly Active does not describe it in my book.</p> <p>Now I do vaguely recall seeing questions that were protected/locked to prevent the same activity that this header claims to prevent.</p> <p>Maybe it's been brought up before, but I tried 2 or 3 different subjects and did not see it pop up.</p> <p>Just wanted to voice my concern.</p>
How does the system determine a "Highly active question." -- I think 6 year old questions are not Highly active
<p>That's a system-level issue that you'll have to raise on <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/">meta</a>.</p>
7095
2019-12-20T20:51:32.603
|bug|
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qjVYo.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/qjVYo.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p> <p>Of course, this should be capital M from mega, not the lower case m from milli!</p>
Can we have the correct prefix for "people reached"?
<p>Sure, I think it's a good question if you emphasize this part:</p> <blockquote> <p>don't know enough about Inductors to find a suitable substitute</p> </blockquote> <p>An answer to that will be valuable far longer than a simple shopping question.</p>
7099
2019-12-30T14:41:33.887
|discussion|
<p>I am following an old schematic and a few of the Inductors are discontinued and cannot be found for sale anywhere. I have the datasheets but don't know enough about Inductors to find a suitable substitute.</p> <p>The rules specifically state shopping type recommendations are off-topic, so I'm wondering if my question is in a grey-area.</p>
Can I ask about finding a substitute / replacement component that's discontinued?
<p>This question was closed because 5 people were of the opinion that it didn't conform to the stated mission of this forum:</p> <blockquote> <p>Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site…. …we're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about electronics [and electrical engineering] design [and theory]…. This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum.</p> <p>Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.</p> <p>Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers.</p> </blockquote> <p>The stated reason is actually just a box that was checked by more voters than any other. The real reason can only be determined by interviewing the voters. That is often the case.</p> <p>In my opinion, the question is largely opinion based. As a history question, it does not pertain to an actual problem that anyone is facing today. The answers are not very likely to be useful for the education or assistance in the field today. That is not to say that the question and answers lack value, but only that they do not serve the purpose of this forum. I hope answers answers and comments provided are of some value to the asker, but I don't think they contribute to the mission of this forum. For those reasons, I provided an answer but voted to close the question.</p>
7106
2020-01-06T08:06:38.173
|discussion|closed-questions|close-reasons|specific-question|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/474126/102305">How low have mains frequencies gone? What areas once used 30 Hz, and why?</a></p> <p>Votes are +10/-3, there are three good answers with summed votes +18/-0, and the answers.</p> <p>The stated close reason is:</p> <blockquote> <p>Questions on the use of electronic devices are off-topic as this site is intended specifically for questions on electronics design.</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm not sure how this applies because design of a power distribution includes the choice of mains frequency (in this case as low as 30 Hz) and this is certainly a circuit, and questions about mains power distribution are demonstrably on-topic (I can find many that are well-received and answered).</p> <p>The only negative comment I've found is that it lacks </p> <blockquote> <p>enough effort or EE aptitude</p> </blockquote> <p>but I don't know if that's the reason this question was closed or not. </p> <p>So my questions are only:</p> <ol> <li>Was this question likely closed <em>for the stated close reason</em>, or for a different reason that's not stated?</li> <li>What edits can be done to address either the stated or the likely close reason that wouldn't conflict with the existing answers?</li> </ol> <p>One edit I can think of off the top of my head is moving the "<em>why?</em>" to the beginning of the title. </p>
How to edit the question to address the likely reasons that it was closed?
<p>I suspect it hasn't gotten attention because no-one who's seen it categorically knows the answer. It's the sort of thing where if the docs are unclear or ambiguous, nothing short of a test to learn the real answer would do.</p> <p>If you'd like some help designing the test that would tell you the answer, edit the question to so reflect, perhaps with your first stab at a test design -- though I suspect once you try your first stab, you'll have your answer.</p>
7115
2020-01-30T22:24:51.773
|discussion|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/478589/psu-series-and-parallel-tracking-mode-current-limit-behavior/478591">PSU Series and Parallel Tracking Mode, Current Limit Behavior</a></p> <p>I think this is a well considered and articulated question. Also not that deep or esoteric. So why hasn't it gotten any love?</p>
Critique My Question
<p>So, it indeed changed, and several sites have been affected by this (see: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/344292/why-are-the-colors-of-visited-and-non-visited-links-on-academia-se-so-different">Why are the colors of visited and non-visited links on Academia.SE so different?</a>). This is likely due to some tweaks in the CSS (see this answer to: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/344241/325443">Code highlighting colors were changed. Intentional or not?</a>), and was probably unintentional, which explains why nobody haven't been warned about this change.</p> <p>In any case, it seems to be fixed now.</p>
7132
2020-02-27T11:44:33.570
|discussion|design|
<p>Roses are red, violets are blue,<br> Normal links are blue, visited links are red.</p> <p>But has the visited link color changed, very recently? I can't seem to recall it was red. Maybe my memory is weak, though.</p> <p>And why red anyway? That's way too prominent in my opinion. I don't care that much whether I already saw the link (and question titles are easy to remember), but the red color made me wonder if there was some kind of error, or thing that the system was urging me to check on a few random questions, before I realized the actual reason.</p> <p>Can we make that color less disruptive (as I'm pretty sure it was some time ago)?</p>
Did the "visited link" color change recently?
<blockquote> <p>Are such reference Q&amp;As desirable?</p> </blockquote> <p>Absolutely! Look at Olin's <a href="http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/34745/11683">Choosing power supply, how to get the voltage and current ratings?</a></p> <blockquote> <p>If it works out, how can I encourage power users to link to it, or even close as duplicate thereof, often?</p> </blockquote> <p>That's hard to predict or control. It all depends on the quality of the question and its answers.</p> <hr> <blockquote> <p>So, here it is: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/486156/replacements-for-ne555-circuits-or-why-and-how-should-i-replace-my-ne555/486157#486157">Replacements for NE555 circuits (or: WHY and HOW should I replace my NE555?)</a></p> </blockquote> <p>OK, let's talk about that.</p> <p>While I appreciate the evident level of frustration that drove this, the question and its lengthy answer come across as very one-sided &mdash; practically a rant against ever using a 555 under any conditions!</p> <p>The question needs to address both the pros and cons of the 555 (and possibly its more modern variants), and the answer needs to avoid getting into the design of replacement circuits for specific applications &mdash; those should be references to separate questions.</p>
7145
2020-03-14T13:24:10.830
|discussion|
<p>A lot of electronics beginners use the NE555 as a learning tool, and that might very well be a good thing – but: in real-world applications, it's rarely the optimum (under any perceivable metric but "I only like the NE555") solution, and often not even an acceptable one.</p> <p>The NE555 stands out here among other components, because the difference between popularity (at least on EE.SE) and applicability is quite singular.</p> <p>So, following an answer Elliot gave, I came up with the idea in a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/486136/555-timer-operating-voltage/486143?noredirect=1#comment1236406_486143">comment</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p>it just appeared to me that we might want to have a "reference question (and answer)" that we can just refer this kind of askers to: "I've noticed the NE555 isn't appropriate for my application or makes it much harder, so is there a simple replacement for these common types of NE555 applications: {list of the typical things}" with a wiki answer, where we'd refer people to simple other one-off triggers, ramp generators, PWM generators…;</p> </blockquote> <p>So, I'm about to write the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/486156/replacements-for-ne555-circuits-or-why-and-how-should-i-replace-my-ne555/486157#486157">reference question</a>, and will start a reference wiki answer, in hopes it doesn't get downvoted to oblivion before it's really a solid reference.</p> <ul> <li>Are such reference Q&amp;As desirable?</li> <li>If it works out, how can I encourage power users to link to it, or even close as duplicate thereof, often?</li> </ul>
"Reference question" for 555-related questions
<p>I'd just let criticism roll off your back like water off of a duck (I try and do that with some success, not always). </p> <p>I do think people are a little trigger happy on the downvoting, but that comes with the space at SE, can't make everyone happy. Sometimes people just hate you for no reason or stupid reasons, that doesn't stop me from posting. </p> <p>I think the answer is good. </p>
7156
2020-04-07T13:03:47.543
|discussion|
<p>A longtime user said that my answer was inappropriate. <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/491380/sn74ls93n-is-not-counting-as-expected/491388">SN74LS93N is not counting as expected</a> Please help me understand why it is inappropriate. I have been an active user for a year now, and I thought that I understood this site.</p> <p>At the time that I answered the OP had not posted a schematic, however a video indicated two potential issues. I pointed out these two issues in my answer. The OP made the corrections that I recommended and the problem was solved.</p>
Inappropriate answer?
<p>I was being dumb - it can be found here: -</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pgwZb.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/pgwZb.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
7166
2020-04-15T09:19:46.533
|bug|close-reasons|
<p>Until very recently (maybe less than a couple of days ago) if I voted to close a question, I could re-open the close box and find a hyper-link to a page that explained why shopping questions get closed (for instance). I could then copy that hyper-link and add a comment to the original question such as: - </p> <pre><code>[Reason why shopping questions get closed](hyper-link) </code></pre> <p>I did this to be a little helpful to the person raising the question.</p> <p>I can't easily find that hyper link any more so can anyone direct me?</p> <h2>EDIT</h2> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">This is the link</a> I'm referring to.</p>
Can't access "reasons for" links in closure box
<p>FPGA, Verilog (or any other HDL) and LEDs are all on-topic here, as are questions about trouble-shooting electronics. </p> <p>You are however assumed to have sufficient electronics knowledge to perform some basic trouble-shooting yourself when prompted. At least basic stuff like hooking up a multimeter to measure supply voltage, pin output voltage and LED polarity.</p> <p>The more details and trouble-shooting efforts you can put in the question, the better. Include source code and/or schematic and/or links to datasheets in the question, if they are relevant.</p>
7177
2020-04-29T09:30:56.490
|discussion|
<p>I've bought an FPGA, written some verilog to blink an LED, I've flashed the FPGA and it "doesn't work". </p> <p>So my question is basically "why don't I see any blinking? Where is the bug and how do I fix it" </p> <p>Now, if I describe what I've tried to debug my work, explain how my source is built, etc, how I'm flashing it, is the question on-topic here?</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/496495/why-isnt-my-led-blinking?noredirect=1#comment1265452_496495">This is the question I ended up posting</a>.</p>
Is "why isn't my fpga blinking an LED" on topic here?
<p>If you click approve on <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/253667">this edit</a>, it will approve the suggested edit and override the decision of the two other reviewers. This is <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/295028/295232">relatively new functionality</a>.</p> <p>Note that there is a gray banner between the navigation bar and the Approve button (only visible for you). It states exactly what happens when you click 'Approve':</p> <blockquote> <p>This suggested edit to your post has already been handled and your action is no longer required.</p> <p>If you disagree with this edit being rejected, you can apply it to your post using the Approve button below.</p> </blockquote> <hr /> <p>But it looks like the user wanted to write an <em>answer</em> to your question, so they're completely changing the meaning of your post. They could probably better <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer">ask and answer a question themselves</a>, though I can't comment on the validity of what they're writing.</p>
7183
2020-05-08T15:32:29.787
|support|
<p>I received an email today informing I have something in my inbox, when I clicked the link, it opened a page showing suggested edits to my closed question, on the page I'm shown on that users winny and JYelton have rejected the edits, to far right of this information is an Approve button.</p> <p>What does this approve button do, does it approve those users' rejection of the edit or does it approve suggested edit. </p>
What does approve button in suggested edits do?
<p>Thank you for raising the issue, I see it's been escalated and I hope the help will be fixed.</p> <p>As per why we use the escaped dollar sign, <a href="https://electronics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/440/tex-delimiters-should-be-changed">here's the explanation.</a></p>
7208
2020-05-30T16:20:43.867
|support|mathjax|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help#latex">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/editing-help#latex</a> is plain wrong, <code>$x$</code> doesn't work on EE.SE, <code>\$x\$</code> does (which, honestly, is super annoying, because we're dealing with far more math than finances).</p> <p>Could someone fix that page?</p>
Help page about embedding LaTeX is wrong, needs fixin'
<p>It's common that there incorrect items or statements in the question, they are asking a question because they aren't certain. There is no need to close questions because they are technically incorrect, unless the error is something very trivial and localized, with no interest to future readers. For example, Stack Overflow closes questions that can be answered by fixing a simple typo, like a stray semicolon in source code.</p> <p>I think a question based on typos or silly misunderstandings should be closed here on EE as well. Like for example: "What is the current flowing through R1 in this schematic? It burned up - see picture - and I'm trying to figure out why". Then someone notes: "That's not R1, the silk screen says R10". Such a question can't be answered but needs clarification by the OP - close as unclear until fixed. </p>
7214
2020-06-02T16:23:02.197
|discussion|feature-request|close-reasons|
<p>The question <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/503250/how-to-fully-discharge-supercapacitor">How to fully discharge supercapacitor?</a> was answered by showing the user that they had made a calculation error.</p> <p>Should there be a "caused by a typo or calculation error" close reason?</p>
Close reason for a calco (like a typo)?
<p>Almost all of the questions that had the project-management tags are from the EE.SE 1.0 days and are 8-10 years old. The questions still have value,so they need not be deleted (also, it is not necessary to go back and find old questions to be closed, if there are problems with old questions (like people posting bad answers, then they should be closed). The questions cannot be moved, as only questions up to 1 month old can be moved to a different site. The questions will need to be retagged, do you best on the retagging. </p>
7219
2020-06-03T09:31:20.033
|discussion|tag-cleanup|
<p>I noticed that there is a tag <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/project-management" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;project-management&#39;" rel="tag">project-management</a>. This should be explicitly off-topic and there is even a dedicated site for such questions, <a href="https://pm.stackexchange.com/">https://pm.stackexchange.com/</a>. Notably, almost no question using the tag is actually about project management. </p> <p>It's just 25 questions so I can clean this up myself with edits, but posting here before I go ahead. I'd do this according to the <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/324070/what-is-the-process-for-tag-removal-burnination">SO tag removal process</a> which (TL;DR) basically means not just blindly removing the tag from every post, but also reviewing each post to see if it should be edited, closed or if other tags needs changing while at it. I trust that the same method is sensible to follow on EE as well.</p>
Why is there a project management tag?
<p>Tag scores are updated once every 24 hours. You got two upvotes the last hour, but it may take a while for your tag score to be updated.</p>
7229
2020-06-15T16:59:26.173
|support|
<p>My tag score for [digital-logic] is 1 instead of 2. Why?</p>
I have answered 2 questions with a score of 1 each on the tag digital-logic. Yet my tag score is only 1 for digital-logic. Why?
<p>I once had a boss with lots of experience and a PhD but did not know how to use a computer, but he knew the power of a pencil.</p> <p>Meaning: you don't need computer skills or even a schematic editor to be a great engineer.</p> <p>This was filtered from @MarcusMüller 's last photo.</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/eWHxi.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/eWHxi.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p> <p>But you need some computer skills to make a readable photo.</p>
7231
2020-06-16T09:03:47.250
|support|schematic|
<p>I'm using a touch-screen device (a smartphone or a tablet) to access this site.</p> <p>Hence, the built-in circuit lab won't work for me. What do I do to add a schematic to my question?</p>
How to add a schematic if my mobile device can't run the schematics editor?
<p>When I read the question I thought it was about modifying a car or motor cycles 12 cigarette lighter so I moved it. I apologise, it shouldn't have been moved, I am human and I do make mistakes every once in a while (I review 100s of questions on the site each week)</p>
7236
2020-07-11T07:32:59.367
|discussion|
<p>This question was migrated to Motor vehicle maintenanace and repair:</p> <p><a href="https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/q/77787/10976">https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/q/77787/10976</a></p> <p>Why? It is clearly not about a motor vehicle and is about the use of power supplies, which means it is surely more relevant on this stack.</p>
Migrating questions when and why
<p>You're right, line spacing has been increased as mentioned here on Meta Stack Exchange: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/353446/295232">New post formatting</a></p> <p>Many people don't like the change, and posts like <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/353525/295232">Please revert the line-height change!</a> and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/353529/295232">this answer</a> are very popular right now.</p>
7249
2020-08-27T16:17:47.070
|bug|
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/DvhGG.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/DvhGG.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p> <p>The line spacing on Q&amp;A text has opened up making each line look like a separate paragraph. This is the same on Chrome / IE and on Android Chrome.</p> <p>Are some of the guys in the basement twiddling with the knobs?</p>
Has there been a body text CSS change on EE.SE?
<p>Right now y'all are using the three slots allowed for a site by default - it's not a matter of them being stuck, that's just the default for everyone. We can expand the slots to four or five - five is the max - but we tend to do so thoughtfully to ensure that there's a strong need for it.</p> <p>Many of the requests we get for this come from sites that have used the three slots but one of the close reasons they have active currently gets very little usage and so we recommend that they retire an unused reason rather than having a fourth one. This is important because the close UI can already be somewhat confusing and muddying the system with superfluous close reasons exacerbates that issue. We're doing a lot to improve that experience so hopefully that won't be as big of an issue moving forward.</p> <p>The first thing that I do when I get a request like this is to review the 10k user tools that show the close stats for the site over the last period of time if you have 10k reputation here, you can <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tools/question-close-stats?daterange=last90days">view the last 90 days by clicking this link</a>. If you don't have 10k, I'll show you what it looks like here:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BbAUe.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BbAUe.png" alt="Screenshot of the 10k close tools page, showing the usage of all the close reasons over the last 90 days. Description in following paragraph of text." /></a></p> <p>Here you can see the usage of the different close reasons the big ones in the first five rows are the ones on the &quot;community specific&quot; page of reasons, so the three custom ones for EE along with the catch-all &quot;other&quot; and the migration option (belongs on another site). Of the three custom ones, your repair reason is used the least, only used on 5.23% of questions overall - now, this is a small percentage but since y'all close quite a few questions, it's still 70 questions, or about one per day. The other two are nearly triple that, around 13.5% each.</p> <p>Considering this, I'm willing to increase the number of slots to four but I'd really like y'all to think about your close reason more carefully - not because I think the reason you want to add is bad - you're already using it as the most-created reason for the &quot;other&quot; option:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NT4QX.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NT4QX.png" alt="Screenshot of further down on the 10k page where it shows the list of other options. The word&quot; homework is highlighted in many of the items on the list, indicating that this reason in various forms is very common." /></a></p> <p>There were 70 questions over the last 90 days closed with some variation of the homework close reason and - well, I'm supporting making this a close reason for the minimal reason that some of the messages that have been created weren't necessarily very kind:</p> <blockquote> <p>I’m voting to close this question because this is homework, dumped on us, without any own effort and without even asking a question of one's own understanding.</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>I’m voting to close this question because stack exchange isn't a homework solved on demand service.</p> </blockquote> <p>I understand that it can be frustrating to see these questions over and over and even to have a request like this one in place to get it made an official reason makes you hopeful and looking forward to a time you don't have to recreate the text over and over.</p> <p>So, what I'm asking is that y'all come up with a few things - close reasons are much more complex now than they were when your last reason was added. Now, rather than only needing one piece of text that did all the work, you can now target the text to different audiences. So, rather than one, you need five elements:</p> <ol> <li>Brief description - this is the <strong>Bold</strong> part of the close reason that appears in the close vote UI when closers are voting to close the post. It's the equivalent of &quot;Needs more focus&quot;. For this, maybe something like &quot;Homework&quot;?</li> <li>Usage guidance - this tells close voters when to use this close reason. So, you could put something like: <blockquote> <p>This question is about a homework problem but is missing additional details such as the asker's attempt at a solution and an explanation of what they do not understand.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li>Post notice close description - visible to all users. This is a general note about why the question was closed. It can include links to resources that explain the site's policy. An example might be: <blockquote> <p>This question was <strong>closed</strong> because it is about a homework problem but doesn't provide sufficient information to be answered. It is not currently accepting answers.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li>Post owner guidance - this additional information appears in the post notice but only for the asker of the question. It should contained detailed information about how they can improve their post and may also include links to help here on meta or in the help center. For example: <blockquote> <p>While we will not provide the answers to your homework, we can help you understand how to get to the correct answer. To do this, we need you to edit the question to include more details including what work you have already done and the solution you came up with and specific information about where you are stuck on solving this problem.</p> </blockquote> </li> <li>Privileged user guidance - this additional information appears in the post notice but only for users with the close/reopen privilege. It is designed to help them know how to guide the asker in improving their question or inform them when the question should be reopened. You might say something like: <blockquote> <p>Please guide the user with specifics on how they can improve their homework question - if some of the details are in the comments, consider editing the question to include them. If the necessary information is added to the question, please vote to reopen it.</p> </blockquote> </li> </ol> <p>Y'all have a ton more context than I do, so I assume you can do a better job of crafting these elements than I can but I do hope that this gives you some help in how to do this. You have 500 characters to work with for the last four of these. The first is much shorter (100 characters). Please let me know if you have any questions. Once you've completed this, ping me and I'll get a developer to increase the number of close reasons for you.</p> <p>Additionally, if y'all would like to follow this format for your <em>existing</em> close reasons, please do drafts for them here on EE Meta and a CM can edit the existing reasons to follow this pattern (have a mod tag the discussion <a href="/questions/tagged/status-review" class="post-tag moderator-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;status-review&#39;" rel="tag">status-review</a> once you've settled on the text). Since moderators can not edit the close reasons, you'll need a CM to help with that but we're happy to do it if you wish.</p>
7261
2020-09-13T03:32:39.680
|discussion|feature-request|close-reasons|homework|
<p>After checking the stats on custom closing messages, homework seems to come up at least 30% to 50% of the time. Because of this, creating a custom closing message would be beneficial.</p> <p>Homework questions are allowed on this site if there has been a solution attempted, without a solution the question should be closed (there are unscrupulous posters that post questions straight from a text book without attempting or even post cell phone pics straight from exams).</p> <p>A suggestion on a message would be this:</p> <blockquote> <p>I’m voting to close this question because homework needs an attempt at a solution. Provide the solution, edit the question and reopen your question</p> </blockquote> <p>If you have any suggestions on a message post below</p> <p>Edit:</p> <p>For anyone looking at this for the status review, we need the question count to be increased on the site so we can add more close reasons. I think ours is suck at 3, we'd like 4 or possibly 5.</p>
Adding a community specific close message for homework
<p>This is the sort of case where we should be able to ban a meaningless tag from <em>future</em> use, but where retroactively touching questions to remove it would create unjustified churn cluttering up the main page.</p>
7262
2020-09-13T09:15:42.847
|discussion|tags|
<p>Is there a rationale for the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/texas-instruments" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;texas-instruments&#39;" rel="tag">texas-instruments</a> tag?</p> <p>I don't see how that's a sensible category for engineering questions – if you want to talk about something like <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/msp430" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;msp430&#39;" rel="tag">msp430</a>, there's a tag for that, and it really doesn't matter who produces the buck converter controller you have a question about, does it?</p> <p>Didn't want to this &quot;tag-cleanup&quot; right away, because maybe I'm just missing something.</p>
Is there a reason for [tag:texas-instruments]?
<p>This is fine if...</p> <ol> <li>everyone reads the faq's of the sites before migration</li> <li>We could actually get this implemented.</li> </ol> <p>One problem I see is people forwarding questions wrongly to another site, a mod is less likely to do so, just my two cents.</p>
7268
2020-09-20T19:12:23.397
|discussion|migration|close-reasons|
<p>While reviewing our close dialogs, I noticed that as of now, only migration to</p> <ul> <li>meta.electronics and</li> <li>superuser</li> </ul> <p>is possible.</p> <p>I'd propose we add multiple:</p> <ul> <li><strong>StackOverflow</strong> because there's the occasional &quot;how do I program a loop for my microcontroller&quot; question, and SO will not even notice the increase in traffic</li> <li><strong>Arduino.SO</strong> because, well, that exists and while the two communities have overlapping topics, I think a lot of the questions about arduinos are arduino-specific both in hardware/software environment and in <em>audience</em>, and the askers might simply be better off in a community understands their needs. <strong>The situation has changed, neither Arduino nor RPi are beta sites anymore.</strong></li> <li><strong>Signals.SE</strong> (DSP.SE): A lot of the questions here wander the line between electrical engineering and pure signal processing/math. Having that option helps the askers – and the DSP.SE community is fairly active. I'd like to foster that.</li> </ul> <p>Of course, suggestion to migrate are not to be taken lightly, but I see them as the preferrable alternative to &quot;denyingly&quot; closing, of course given that we're not dumping our garbage on another community, but I think &quot;if it's too unclear to be answered, close it for that and comment that OP should improve the question and ask it somewhere specific&quot; isn't that hard a guideline to implement.</p> <p>So, what're the thought about adding these three options?</p> <p>Alex just pointed to the last 90 days' migration stats:</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/WRU1u.png" alt="Migration stats" /></a></p> <p>My analysis:</p> <ol> <li>Migration is not a popular feature (and that's alright, migration is less desirable than answering, and undesirable when abused to get rid of garbage)</li> <li>With 35 outgoing migrations in 90 days, we only had 2 rejected ones, in two different receiving communities. We're not putting &quot;a big load&quot; on smaller communities.</li> <li>SuperUser is by far not the most popular migration target, although being the only suggestion in the &quot;this belongs on...&quot; options.</li> </ol>
Would it be a good idea to have more "this question belongs on another site" options?
<p>The question has been voted to be closed as a duplicate, but had only received three votes. I don't think it should be closed, but it doesn't matter as the question has been answered (the main thing closing does it's prevent new answers) As far as down votes the community is free to choose how they vote on questions.</p>
7288
2020-10-23T20:28:33.680
|discussion|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/528793/209934">A question of mine about ground</a> has received three requests to be closed and has received like two downvotes. The three requests say that my answer is a duplicate, probably of <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/56210/209934">this other question</a>.</p> <p>What my question is about: a specific definition of ground used by some people. Such definition is &quot;ground is the point/node defined as 0 V&quot;. I want to know if this definition is correct or not:</p> <ul> <li>If it is incorrect, I ask for another definition.</li> <li>If it is correct and they mean &quot;0 V of potential&quot;, I ask for someone to clarify me this and I don't have any further questions.</li> <li>If it is correct and they mean &quot;0 V of voltage&quot;, I then give two reasons why that definition is misleading: 1) this definition is meaningless because you are talking about just one point when actually voltage is meaningful when talking about two points; 2) the definition implies ground is not <strong>defined</strong> as 0 V, but that it is 0 V because we measure its voltage with respect to itself. After giving each reason, I ask if I'm correct at my conclusions, and if not, I ask to tell me why.</li> </ul> <p>On the other hand, the question that has been linked to my question is about:</p> <ul> <li>Ground in circuit simulators. In this context <em>ground</em> is defined as <em>the node with respect to which the node voltages are measured</em>. So, in this context, it's better to call <em>ground</em> as <em>reference node</em>.</li> <li>The fact that it is irrelevant (in the context of analysis), which node is used as reference node.</li> <li>Different ground symbols.</li> </ul> <p>Clearly my question is not the same as the linked question. If you think it is, please explain why. My question is about ground defined as &quot;the point defined as 0 V&quot;, while the linked question is about ground defined as &quot;reference node&quot;.</p> <p>The user <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/528793/whats-ground-is-it-the-point-defined-as-0-v-of-potential-or-voltage-if-the-la#comment1362542_528793">Chris Stratton said</a> in a comment to my question description that &quot;The question of which this is an obvious duplicate is not about simulation but about general concepts. It is absolutely a duplicte.&quot; Assuming he is right, how would I know beforehand the definition of ground used in the linked question is a general definition? In the linked question, people were talking about <strong>circuit analysis</strong>, while my question was about circuits in homes, power systems, distribution systems, etc. My reply to him was that I didn't know the definition of ground used in the linked question, is also used in the context I was talking about (assuming he is right). I further said that if I hadn't asked my question, I wouldn't have known that in the first place. Then, he didn't reply me more. How do I know if he at the end agreed with me? Of if he still thinks my question is a duplicate?</p> <h3>Downvotes because I'm overthinking?</h3> <p>The users <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/528793/whats-ground-is-it-the-point-defined-as-0-v-of-potential-or-voltage-if-the-la#comment1362869_528795">The Photon</a>, <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/528793/whats-ground-is-it-the-point-defined-as-0-v-of-potential-or-voltage-if-the-la#comment1362880_528806">Neil_UK</a> and <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/528793/whats-ground-is-it-the-point-defined-as-0-v-of-potential-or-voltage-if-the-la#comment1362623_528793">jonk</a> in a way said I was overthinking (click the links to read their comments). Is this a reason for downvotes? If yes, I think that would be a stupid reason.</p> <p>An example: It's like telling a physicist he is overthinking when he's trying to explain a phenomena, don't you think? It's like telling Einstein &quot;You're wrong trying to disprove Newtonian mechanics, you're overthiking, you're complicating this&quot;, yet in the end, Einstein was correct.</p> <p>Another example: You may have heard of the beer analogy for explaining reactive power. This analogy is good only at explaining that apparent power is never less than active power or reactive power. But this analogy is wrong, because if you look at the image people use, it gives the illusion that apparent power (the whole beer) is the sum of active power (the liquid) plus reactive power (the foam), when in reality it's the square root of the sum of active power squared plus reactive power squared. Now imagine that I explain this truth to someone, i.e. why the beer analogy is wrong, and I receive downvotes just because I overthought the analogy. Seriously?</p> <p>I'm asking my question because I want to know if the definition of ground I said was correct. And if it wasn't, I asked for a more <strong>precise</strong> definition.</p>
Why has my question received downvotes and has been considered as duplicate?
<p>It <em>is</em> already easy to roll back edits. Here is what it looks like for me when I look at the edit history for your second question. The first revision has a dedicated <em>rollback</em> button.</p> <blockquote> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/u583A.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/u583A.png" alt="illustration of the rollback feature" /></a></p> </blockquote> <p>Any user with a reputation score of at least 2000 should see it, but it may be hidden for <strike>peons</strike> new users.</p> <p>However, I really don't see the problem with either of these questions. The edit history for the first one does not show anything other than typo and grammar corrections, and the second one didn't seem to change the meat of the answer.</p>
7291
2020-10-24T13:03:04.530
|discussion|support|
<p>Reccently I came across this phenomenon: In some questions, the mistake that led to the question was pointed out by other users due to either someone answering the question or pointing out the mistake in the comments. The Original Poster then edited the question to hide the mistake. This removed the purpose of the question, making it difficult to understand the answers or made it difficult to answer the question. What is the best thing to do in these situations?</p> <p>For example:</p> <ol> <li><p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/518715/why-should-we-not-change-inputs-to-a-sequential-circuit-moore-machine-at-the-c">Why should we not change inputs to a sequential circuit (Moore machine) at the clock edge?</a> Here the original poster edited the question to make the problem less obvious. Only when looking at the previous version in the edit history, the problem becomes obvious.</p> </li> <li><p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/506608/asynchronous-reset-within-always-block-blocking-vs-non-blocking-assignment">Asynchronous reset within always block - BLOCKING vs NON-BLOCKING assignment</a> In this case, the question was edited after it was answered, making the answer look confusing to other readers.</p> </li> </ol> <p>I have 2 suggestions:</p> <ol> <li>Locking questions that have been answered so that users cannot change the question without moderator's permissions.</li> <li>Make it easier for other (trusted) users to roll back questions.</li> </ol> <p>Please give more suggestions or shed light on the policy of the community on these situations, so we can know what has to be done in such a situation.</p>
Poster edited the question in such a manner that it became hard to identify the original problem
<p>There are a few things one can do on technically incorrect posts:</p> <ol> <li>Ask the OP to change the post.</li> <li><s>Edit the post yourself (usually not a good idea to completely rearrange a post).</s> <em>nope, that's not allowed, unless the &quot;error&quot; is an obvious mistake like a typo</em></li> <li>post your own answer</li> <li>Downvote the post.</li> </ol> <p>Keep in mind that technically incorrect means different things to different people. The first thing to do would be to use the comment system and try to correct the post that way.</p> <p>If you do wish do discuss questions on the meta realize that it's a slower process than the steps above</p>
7294
2020-11-28T14:57:02.643
|discussion|
<p>Can I use the Meta site to discuss technically incorrect answers so that the the community could reach a consensus that the answer was incorrect and appropriate action can be taken?</p>
How should technically incorrect answers be dealt with?
<p>I suppose I should weigh in on this, since my answer is under scrutiny here.</p> <p>I'll point out that this answer was written by myself <em>7 years ago</em>, and has amassed <em>37 thousand views</em> over that time. In all that time, it is expected that <em>someone</em> would have found issue with the answer if it was factually incorrect. There are several other highly reputable HDL coders on this site, several of which I interacted with regularly years ago, and they did not say anything about this answer.</p> <p>Additionally, the OPs question actually was regarding the for loop working: &quot;I don't think the for loop is working,... Where am I going wrong?&quot;</p> <p>So I <em>did</em> answer the question, and the <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/57035/n-bit-shift-register-serial-out-in-vhdl/57042#comment108755_57042">OP even commented</a> saying my answer was <em>useful</em> to them.</p> <p>There is no obligation on this site to supply complete code, and this is not a tutorial site where you google &quot;Shift register&quot; and get a complete example. I'm under no obligation <em>to even put code in my answer.</em></p> <p>Indeed, I even <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/57035/n-bit-shift-register-serial-out-in-vhdl/57042#comment1363937_57042">commented in response to you</a> the following,</p> <blockquote> <p>I wrote this answer 7 years ago with the intention of demonstrating the thinking behind using a state machine to solve problems like this. The intention is to demonstrate a general concept. The OP is welcome to modify it to his needs. My coding practices have changed since then and I'm sure there are multiple things anyone could fine wrong with this, since I <strong>wrote it in my free time and not as a rigorous academic exercise</strong>. You are welcome to write an answer if you think mine is inadequate.</p> </blockquote> <p>Additionally, there are regional and industry differences in how terms are used, depending on how people are trained and their educational background.</p> <p>Anyway, regarding your actual complaints. I am under no obligation to address these but will link to relevant resources for you to take a look at.</p> <p>#1, please see <a href="https://vhdlwhiz.com/for-loop/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://vhdlwhiz.com/for-loop/</a> Where it demonstrates the behaviour of a for loop, note that this code:</p> <pre><code>entity T04_ForLoopTb is end entity; architecture sim of T04_ForLoopTb is begin process is begin for i in 1 to 10 loop report &quot;i=&quot; &amp; integer'image(i); end loop; wait; end process; end architecture; </code></pre> <p>Produces this:</p> <pre><code># ** Note: i=1 # Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Instance: /t04_forlooptb # ** Note: i=2 # Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Instance: /t04_forlooptb # ** Note: i=3 # Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Instance: /t04_forlooptb # ** Note: i=4 # Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Instance: /t04_forlooptb # ** Note: i=5 </code></pre> <p>And secondly:</p> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/57035/n-bit-shift-register-serial-out-in-vhdl/57042#comment1363572_57042">As I said in my comment:</a></p> <blockquote> <p>parallel_in supplies the reset value of the internal shift register. So I kept it with the same name and function. It is otherwise unused, OP must explain what it was originally intended for. I agree that a SISO register should be otherwise strictly serial.</p> </blockquote> <p>Or in other words, I kept as closely as possible to the OPs code so that they can understand what changes I made that are relevant to their application. Again, <strong>I was under no obligation to write an actual shift register, if the OP wanted a parallel-serial monstrosity, then that's what they got!</strong></p>
7298
2020-12-02T14:02:54.657
|discussion|
<p>I believe that <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/57042/238188">this answer</a> which got 22 upvotes is wrong for the following reason:</p> <ul> <li><p>The author's claim that &quot;s_out is only going to change once - to the value it was when the loop ended, which in this case is s_in shifted by 4&quot; is wrong since it has been proven wrong by observing the simulation result. The technical reason is that signal values get updated at the end of the delta cycle.</p> </li> <li><p>The author uses a Finite State machine that copies a parallel value to the shift register after n shifts, instead of storing the value.</p> </li> </ul> <p>I also commented on the author's answer why I felt it was wrong.</p> <p>As none of the other suggestions mentioned worked for me, I have decided to take the last alternative and discuss about this answer on Meta.</p> <hr /> <p>Update: The issue got resolved after I added a comment informing the author about this discussion. The author then fixed the mistake in their answer.</p>
Discussion about voting of answers to a question on VHDL
<p>Thank you @Nabla for asking this, the community team has reviewed and we've made the change to the site.</p> <p>The citation tool has been turned on by the team and you can find it below every post as you see in the screenshot below:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gkTEx.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/gkTEx.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
7307
2020-12-15T10:15:53.997
|discussion|feature-request|status-completed|
<p>Math SE has got a cite button to give citations on homeworks or etc. Can we have it here too?</p> <p>Do we want a cite button? What are the advantages\disadvantages?</p> <p>A quote from math stack exchange to answer why do we need cite button under every post by @David E Speyer</p> <blockquote> <p>I am a big fan of the cite button, because it reminds people that they are supposed to cite things they learned here on math.SE. Citations are the currency of academia -- if I write a good answer here, I want to be able to say five years later that this answer was cited so many times in so many papers. Indeed, I get a little annoyed when I see papers that use ideas they learned on MO or math.SE and don't cite them. I know that math.SE is more oriented towards students than research, but it is also important to teach students that they need to cite where they learned things! If you are allowing your students to use math.SE as a reference, then you should be requiring that they cite it just like any other source they use, and the cite button reminds them of this.</p> <p>It seems that people are complaining because they have trained their muscle memory on other SE sites, or on this site before the button was there. The easy solution to this is to move the cite button to the far right.</p> <p>I support moving the cite button to the far right, but keeping it visible on the main post.</p> </blockquote> <p>In <a href="https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21486/do-we-need-the-cite-link-below-every-post">this link</a> you can find out the discussion</p> <p>Also as I mentioned on below comments once we have cite button it will attract attention of people from universities who are studying electronics therefore we will have academical questions regarding research on electronics.</p> <p>I believe this will create a kind of a good diversity here. People will see some people asking about their current electronics research and we will both learn more.</p>
Can we have cite button?
<p>You can post any question as long as it follows these guidelines:<br /> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic</a><br /> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask</a></p> <p>Also don't ask for help finding resources or information<br /> <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/23/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/">https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/23/qa-is-hard-lets-go-shopping/</a></p> <p>Another thing to consult would be this meta for other guidelines</p> <p>However, YMMV on the subject matter, while the site says electrical engineering, most people here follow the circuits branch of electrical engineering. Questions on the price of electricity is off topic, asking about how an aspect of the grid or a power generation facility works is not off topic but there are few with expertise in that area. I'd say that 80%-90% are circuits engineers or digital engineers.</p>
7308
2020-12-17T22:59:13.797
|discussion|tags|
<p>I am interested in posting some questions on EE.SE on the topic of wholesale electricity markets as opposed to Economics.SE</p> <p>This topic is taught in many 400-level undergrad EE degrees that have a concentration in large scale power distribution. If this is acceptable would anyone support the creation of an <code>energy-markets</code> tag to better categorize these kinds of questions? Posting these questions in the Economics.SE while logical isolates much of the EE community's knowledge that would be extremely useful at arriving at accurate answers.</p>
The topic of wholesale energy markets
<p>We have decided in the past to allow homework questions with an attempt at a solution.</p> <p>For those that don't: Close the questions, in a nice way. Ask the OP to provide a solution for the question.</p> <p>Unfortunately sometimes the site (moderators and ques) can't respond fast enough to questions being answered.</p> <p>The moderation team can send serial offenders a warning and suspend them from the site if it becomes a problem, most of the time people don't know what the site policy is and will correct their action when they are informed of the site policies.</p>
7313
2020-12-22T15:41:13.600
|discussion|on-topic|off-topic|homework|
<p>Four questions from <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/260163/derik">this person</a> have been answered by the same member and appear to contravene what is said here: -</p> <p><a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/334822/how-do-i-ask-and-answer-homework-questions">How do I ask and answer homework questions?</a>. In particular, this advice is given: -</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>Providing an answer that doesn't help a student learn is not in the student's own best interest. Therefore you might choose to treat homework questions differently than other questions.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>The member making those answers has been previously informed about making this type of answer a couple of times to my recollection. Many of us are guilty of this (including me); it's easy enough to slip into making an answer that can be used almost verbatim for homework purposes but, a stern word or two usually prevents recurrence.</p> <p>What should be done about this?</p> <p>Do we do anything about it?</p> <p>I've downvoted said questions and answers but I'm not really sure that this is effective or desirable.</p>
Homework answers on demand
<p>There isn't a need for this tag and I don't see a need for the tag, it doesn't follow the recommendation on tags because <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/07/the-death-of-meta-tags/">it's to 'meta'.</a> If nobody else has a problem with removal, remove the tags from each question and I'll delete it.</p> <p>Edit:</p> <p>The tag has be blacklisted</p>
7317
2020-12-27T04:28:37.017
|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-blacklist-request|
<p>There has been a tag <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/small-electronics" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;small-electronics&#39;" rel="tag">small-electronics</a> on this site, and I have no idea what it means. Is there such a thing as small and big electronics? I suggest to delete the tag <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/small-electronics" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;small-electronics&#39;" rel="tag">small-electronics</a></p>
Time to burninate [small-electronics]?
<p>No, it's not available. See <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/353133/295232">Why did the Stack Exchange Android app disappear from the Play Store?</a> on Meta Stack Exchange. The company has stopped supporting the mobile apps altogether: <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/348075/295232">How can I report bugs with or request features for the Stack Exchange mobile apps?</a></p>
7318
2020-12-27T14:30:16.417
|support|notifications|
<p>I have used the Stack Exchange APP for Android before and found it useful (a bit limited). I don't see it in the Play Store for Android. Also, I don't anymore see a reference to the APP here on Stack Exchange.</p> <p>I can't get the original from my old phone (drowned phone). Is the App still available, and if so where can it be found?</p> <p>Tag : &quot;notifications&quot; is the best tag I could find.</p>
Is the Stack Exchange APP for Android still available?
<blockquote> <p>and it is not about …</p> <ul> <li>a shopping or buying recommendation.</li> <li>consumer electronics such as media players, cell phones or smart phones, except when designing these products or modifying their electronics for other uses.</li> <li>Programming software for a PC</li> </ul> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">This is the page</a> to check on on-topicness</p> <p>Headphones are not on topic because it's a consumer electronic repair or modification question</p> <p>If your question is on a headphone circuit question, by all means post it.</p>
7332
2021-01-30T08:00:58.580
|discussion|support|asking-questions|off-topic|
<p>So I found this Stack Exchange site and I have problems with the left earbud of my wired headphones, and after overdoing such instructions <a href="https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-fix-broken-headphones-4582675" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, I decided to ask about my problem with my earphones so I can try and fix it on my own. But the sort of questions of being &quot;off-topic&quot; stopped me from asking.</p> <p>I looked at the tour page and it says:</p> <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/riYD6.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/riYD6.png" alt="Tour Page" /></a></p> <p>The specified &quot;electronics design&quot; could be a sign, but I wasn't sure, so I also checked the tags, and there doesn't seem to be a tag like <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/headphones" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;headphones&#39;" rel="tag">headphones</a> or <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/earphones" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;earphones&#39;" rel="tag">earphones</a></p> <p>So are questions on earphones off-topic?</p>
Are problems regarding headphones off-topic?
<p>To put it in <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/546110/i-am-searching-for-the-datasheet-of-the-ta7634ap?noredirect=1#comment1419554_546110">Andy's words</a>:</p> <blockquote> <p><em>Questions seeking recommendations for specific products or places to purchase them are off-topic as they are rarely useful to others and quickly obsolete.</em> - unfortunately, this includes &quot;can't find, can you help&quot; questions.</p> </blockquote> <p>And I agree: such questions <em>ask for a resource that may or may not exist and fulfills the needs of the asker</em>, which is the reason why we don't allow product recommendation questions (we don't generally dislike choosing components!). There's simply no expertise to be contributed here – we're simply shouldn't be aiming for a transformation to a &quot;super-search engine for hard to find documents&quot;.</p>
7336
2021-02-02T10:09:52.260
|discussion|on-topic|
<p>We have <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22datasheet+for%22+is%3Aquestion">quite a lot</a> questions that basically state</p> <blockquote> <p>I need a datasheet for XYZ, but haven't been able to locate one.</p> </blockquote> <p>I'm assuming the search for <code>&quot;datasheet for&quot; is:question</code> isn't quite an exhaustive list, as things that can be found with a few seconds of google probably were downvoted due to being underresearched, and then potentially deleted by the asker.</p> <p>I wonder whether there's a guideline for how to deal with these</p> <ul> <li>They are asking for an external resource (which feels very similar to product questions)</li> <li>They don't contain a technical <em>question</em> (but a request, which is similar, but is it the same within this site's ideals?)</li> <li>The chances of someone going &quot;oh yes, google won't find that, but here's the datasheet on my special server&quot; is small</li> <li>Answers potentially outdate very quickly and can't be self-contained</li> <li>It's generally not in the SE spirit to replace search engines if they can be used for the same purpose as asking. Does this also apply when google fails to deliver?</li> </ul> <p>Should such questions be closed? If yes, how?</p>
How to deal with datasheet requests
<p>The tag [small] has been burninated.</p>
7347
2021-02-13T14:45:05.767
|discussion|tag-blacklist-request|
<p>I don't see the usefulness of the [small] tag. There are only 4 questions tagged with small. I suggest to burninate it.</p>
Burninate [small] tag
<p>The tags have been merged, enjoy.</p>
7359
2021-02-18T11:00:14.553
|support|tag-cleanup|tag-blacklist-request|
<p>We'll need to retag 89 questions with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/transimpedence" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;transimpedence&#39;" rel="tag">transimpedence</a>. Is there a script that can automate that?</p> <p>Also, can we please blacklist <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/transimpedence" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;transimpedence&#39;" rel="tag">transimpedence</a>?</p>
Typo: [transimpedence] is wrong, [transimpedance] is right, but far less popular
<p>I'm one of the reviewers who rejected the edit. I thought the edited title and the last statement were improvements but, unless I was and still am missing something, the information in the paragraph you added is not present in the question. Granted, the paragraph consists entirely of things which can be inferred (e.g. VDD is the supply voltage) or are true by definition (e.g. rise/fall time), but it's not something the question author added. The question author may not know these definitions so your edit could give the appearance that the question author has provided more details and is more knowledgeable about the topic than is the case.</p> <p>Ultimately this is not a good question and should be closed until the author adds details (I'm also one of the close voters). <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/548601/why-does-decreasing-the-voltage-also-decrease-the-circuit-frequency#comment1428474_548601">You said yourself in a comment on the question</a> that</p> <blockquote> <p>Adding the name of the textbook you referred to would be a good idea.</p> </blockquote> <p>I would want to see a citation of the textbook and a bit more context from the textbook before voting to re-open this question.</p>
7360
2021-02-19T14:02:37.357
|discussion|editing|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/278965">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/278965</a></p> <p>This was the question: <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/548601/why-does-decreasing-the-voltage-also-decrease-the-circuit-frequency">Why does decreasing the voltage also decrease the circuit frequency?</a></p> <p>It's a good question but was closed because &quot;This question needs details or clarity&quot;. So I added details. My edit was rejected because &quot;This edit deviates from the original intent of the post&quot;.</p> <p>This is not true. I just added more details and context to make the question clear and save it. All I did was added the definitions of terms which were <strong>already present in the question</strong>. Without my edit, the post lacks context. All it states is</p> <blockquote> <p>Keeping the same clock frequency becomes unsustainable as Vdd is continuously reduced, because the rise and fall times of signals stop meeting the noise margin of the gate.</p> </blockquote> <p>Other users who are not familiar with this field will have no idea what voltage Vdd refers to here.</p> <p>So I added</p> <blockquote> <p>Here, Vdd is the supply voltage of the CMOS gate. Noise margin of the gate is the allowable noise voltage on the inputs of the gate such that the output will not get corrupted. Rise time is the time taken for the output signal of the gate to rise from 10% to 90% of its final voltage value of logic High level. Fall time is the time taken for the output signal to fall from 90% to 10% of its final voltage value for logic Low level.</p> </blockquote> <p>And slightly modified the last statement to</p> <blockquote> <p>I don't understand why rise time and fall time increases as voltage Vdd decreases.</p> </blockquote>
Why did my suggested edit to improve a good question get rejected?
<p>Unfortunately, embedded systems programming has always been on-topic at SO. It's a scope overlap with this site. As one of the few who actively user-moderate the embedded tag there, I believe this was a big mistake.</p> <p>Because embedded systems questions - particularly trouble-shooting ones - could either be about software or hardware. And as soon as you discover that your problem is in hardware, the question suddenly turns off-topic. Very awkward situation. Those questions would be in a much better place on this site. And then of course on SO you always get the occasional clueless PC programmer showing up to answer embedded systems questions, with post quality ranging from mildly useless to blatantly incorrect.</p> <p>And then of course we have the random clueless people who ask pure electronics hardware questions on SO thinking it is ok somehow. Because of this I recently pushed to have <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/404730/the-electronics-are-all-burninated">the electronics tag purged</a> and the community agreed. So that should hopefully be a little bit of on-topic traffic coming this way instead.</p> <p>But it's too late to fix SO now, it is what it is - embedded systems questions are on-topic there, including microcontroller programming and HDL languages. And therefore that site needs ADC, FPGA, ASIC etc tags too. At any rate, such things should be discussed at SO.</p> <p>I think it takes a new site to fix this: when we launched the software development &amp; electrical engineering communities at <a href="https://codidact.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Codidact</a>, I insisted to keep embedded systems on the software site and have those asked at the EE site instead, with no scope overlap. Though if that separation of topics will work out better is too early to tell, since the site is still young. If it works well, then that's evidence that SE could benefit from the same - time will tell.</p>
7362
2021-02-19T14:17:12.533
|discussion|
<p>I have created a question on Meta Stack Overflow to request blacklisting of our favorite tags like fpga, analog-to-digital-converter, asic etc. on Stack Overflow so that questions on those topics would be asked here, where they rightfully belong. Then we won't have to look at <em>two</em> Stack Exchange sites for questions and answers.</p> <p>[question deleted]<a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405365/should-not-stack-overflow-be-exclusively-for-programming-questions">https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405365/should-not-stack-overflow-be-exclusively-for-programming-questions</a></p> <p>What do you think?</p> <p>Edit: The question I asked on Meta Stack Overflow got deleted and unfortunately I did not take a screenshot of it or archive it or print it.</p>
Do you want the electronics questions from Stack Overflow to be moved to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange?
<p>Good idea, The tags are now merged</p>
7365
2021-02-19T15:11:52.770
|discussion|tags|tag-synonyms|
<p>Yesterday I created <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmable-gain-amplifier" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;programmable-gain-amplifier&#39;" rel="tag">programmable-gain-amplifier</a> (and added the tag info for it) after I answered a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/548762/51760">question</a> yesterday about such an amplifier which used <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pga" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pga&#39;" rel="tag">pga</a>. There are a few <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pga">questions which use the shorter tag</a> and which could/should be tagged with the new, longer one. I could edit these questions individually in order to change the tags on all of them, but since &quot;PGA&quot; is a common acronym it seems likely that users will continue to tag questions about PGAs with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pga" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pga&#39;" rel="tag">pga</a>. Therefore it seems like a good idea to make <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pga" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;pga&#39;" rel="tag">pga</a> a synonym of <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmable-gain-amplifier" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;programmable-gain-amplifier&#39;" rel="tag">programmable-gain-amplifier</a>. However, I cannot suggest this synonym (I don't have a score of 5 on the tag), and in my experience tag synonym suggestions tend not to be reviewed for a long time (if ever) since they are on a <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?tab=Newest&amp;filter=Suggested">separate page</a>.</p> <p>Would a moderator kindly merge the tags and make them synonyms, with <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/programmable-gain-amplifier" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;programmable-gain-amplifier&#39;" rel="tag">programmable-gain-amplifier</a> the master tag?</p>
Make pga tag a synonym of programmable-gain-amplifier tag?
<p>Please look in the help center to learn how this site works, and please do research before posting (it is wasting my time and others to post on issues that could be worked out by learning how the site works): <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help</a></p> <p>This would be of value for you to read:<br /> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer</a><br /> <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote">https://electronics.stackexchange.com/help/why-vote</a></p> <p>The answer that was posted on SO is off topic and it is also a comment, which is why it received downvotes.</p> <p>Voting is a way to flag and remove bad content, and a way to get feedback. It is a tool. if it were a mod on that site, I would have that content deleted because it is not useful and half of the post should have been comments (answers should almost always not have discussion in them, that is what the comment system is for). Normally answers are not deleted but that one does not follow the guidelines. When posts get downvoted, usually its because there is improper use of the site.</p> <p>Secondly we don't concern ourselves here with things that are happening on SO, so please <strong>don't</strong> post about problems on SO on this meta, no one here can do anything for problems there.</p> <p>Any future meta posts regarding SO on this meta will be deleted. I'll leave this one for educational purposes.</p>
7367
2021-02-20T12:10:26.547
|discussion|support|
<p>Lots of digital electronics, FPGA Design, Register Transfer Level (RTL) Design questions have been asked and <strong>continue to be asked</strong> on Stack Overflow, a site for programmers.</p> <p>Take a look at this one, for instance: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/61791834/12311164">Two ways to write pipelines in Verilog</a>. It was asked in 2020. This question is a very good fit for Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange. Currently there are many good questions related to EE topics which get asked there and some are closed since they have no code. See this one: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/56198758/12311164">Latches are transparent to half of the clock cycle. Means?</a> One long time Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange user who also uses Stack Overflow has written in a comment on the question:</p> <blockquote> <p>It is perfectly clear to me what he is asking. However the question should have been on the electronics exchange</p> </blockquote> <p>This problem is because some users claim FPGA Programming and RTL Design is programming since an HDL looks a little like a programming language.</p> <p>This issue has been raised on Meta Stack Overflow 3 years back: <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/354015/12311164">Is digital design on-topic without HDL code?</a></p> <h2>The <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/354155/12311164">right answer by user Tropical_Peach</a> to the above question is now getting downvoted and might get deleted soon.</h2> <p>This issue was not fixed and has now grown bigger.</p> <p>I am posting it here since it is very relevant to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange.</p> <p>I would like to know the opinion of the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange Community on this question. The problem is if good digital design, FPGA programming questions continue to go there, we won't get them here. Some users participate on both Stack Overflow and Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, since they are interested in these topics. However, many who are interested in these topics remain only on Stack Overflow.</p> <p>We have to recognise that there are experts on every Stack Exchange site, and these sites flourish because of the experts.</p> <p>Which site should experts in FPGA, RTL design, digital design and related fields use?</p> <p>Ideally, the answer should be Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange alone. If the answer is both Stack Overflow and Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, then there is a possibility that experts in these topics would be divided into 2 sites. This has already happened.</p> <p>One user has mentioned overlap is allowed. But I don't think overlap is always a good thing. Stack Overflow should be for programming questions, and Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange should be for Electronics design questions, as their respective tours state.</p> <p>If someone has a question related to these topics should they ask on Stack Overflow or Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange?</p>
Does Digital Design fall into our realm or Stack Overflows realm?
<p>To use a meta post to ask for reopening is improper, please use the voting system for that (when you get enough rep). The moderation ques allow people to vote on these questions.</p> <p>The question is off topic and should remain closed because</p> <ol> <li>the provided no context as to how they where creating the flip flop</li> <li>they used an 'is it possible' question, (in which case the answer would probably be 'yes' or 'no'). <em>Specific questions</em> should be used when asking because they communicate exactly what the user wants to know instead of us having to ask in the comments.</li> <li>the question is very short, short questions rarely provide an adequate enough description to allow a user to answer the question.</li> <li>the question is 7 years old and already has an answer</li> </ol> <p>If you do see a question that was closed then help the user edit thier question to make it on topic, after this process is done you could post a comment indicating that the post should be reopened or use a moderator flag and we could look at it</p> <p>The post indicates that it was closed and five people voted on it.</p>
7377
2021-02-28T08:05:34.687
|discussion|
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/135424/238188">T-flip-flop without using a clock</a> - This is a perfectly reasonable question in my opinion, and there is also a datasheet from Analog Devices of a T Flip-Flop that does not use a separate clock, that is, the input is the clock. The accepted answer is correct, but I don't think the question should have been closed. Also it seems to me that people did not <em>understand</em> the question, so they closed it. Datasheet: <a href="https://www.digikey.be/htmldatasheets/production/1228052/0/0/1/hmc749lc3c.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.digikey.be/htmldatasheets/production/1228052/0/0/1/hmc749lc3c.html</a></p>
Why was this question on T Flip-Flops closed? Can we reopen it?