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|discussion|tags| | <p>I want to provide some basic reminders regarding tags. As many of you will know from the other SE sites you participate in, tags are not on the top of the pile functionality wise in the SE sites. However if we keep it a sensible taxonomy from the start we have a good chance to make it better.</p>
<p>Let me start out with the obvious.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Look for existing tags.</strong> Even now in beta. No, especially now in beta. Open the tags page and have a look at it before creating new ones.</li>
<li>Think before you tag. <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/">Don't create meta tags.</a></li>
<li>Be on the look out for bad tags. We already have some the roomba will delete tonight. (Someone created <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/4.0" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged '4.0'" rel="tag">4.0</a> ...) Edit out those abominations early and with prejudice.</li>
<li>If you are unsure about it, ask about it on meta.</li>
</ul>
<p>Let's do it right from the start.</p>
| <p>In some other SE's I frequent, a good rule of thumb when referencing a language-specific tool is to drop the <code>.py</code> and <code>.js</code> where they aren't necessary. Also making proper use of hyphens (<code>-</code>) will save a lot of formatting headaches down the line.</p>
<p>Particularly for IoT builders and developers, it might be better to simply use the name of the formal language they're using and not specifically the tools within those languages. Tool-specific questions are best asked elsewhere anyway.</p>
| 43 | 2016-12-06T22:23:33.217 | Keeping tags clean from the start |
|discussion|status-completed|tags| | <p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smartthings" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smartthings'" rel="tag">smartthings</a> has been created and I get an annoying warning when trying to change it to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-things" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-things'" rel="tag">smart-things</a>. Generally all multi-word tags should be hyphenated. Can we please change the tag name.</p>
<p>Since it is a product name / trademark we should likely have one called <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/samsung-smartthings" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'samsung-smartthings'" rel="tag">samsung-smartthings</a> too. We already have one question (<a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/17/smart-switch-on-fireplace">Safety of a smart switch on a fireplace</a>) that is tagged with it without disclosing any Samsung specifics in the question.</p>
<p>Edit: Someone changed it to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/samsung-smartthings" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'samsung-smartthings'" rel="tag">samsung-smartthings</a>.</p>
| <p><a href="http://www.smartthings.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SmartThings</a> is a proper noun, not a concept. It's spelled as a single word.</p>
<p>As the brand is getting confused with the concept, I've suggested an edit to change the tag to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/samsung-smartthings" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'samsung-smartthings'" rel="tag">samsung-smartthings</a>.</p>
<p>“Smart things” as a concept is far too vague to be a valid tag.</p>
| 44 | 2016-12-06T23:31:14.953 | Smart-Things vs Smartthings |
|discussion|status-completed|tags| | <p>Finally we've got a chance to have a site for this long-standing out of scope topic! Thanks guys!</p>
<p>I would like to propose the creation of a "philips-hue" tag. While it's a very specific vendor-related tag, there are many Hug devices in the world, so probably many visitors will benefit from it.</p>
| <p>The only way to create a tag is to apply it to a question, either when initially posting the question or by editing the question. Tags are not created preemptively, and conversely tags are deleted automatically (after a small delay) if they are removed from every question.</p>
<p>So if you think that a question should have the tag <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/philips-hue" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'philips-hue'" rel="tag">philips-hue</a>, then add the tag to the question. And if there's no applicable question, then we don't need the tag (yet).</p>
<p>There's no need to open a meta discussion for every tag, only when there's some doubt about the usefulness, scope or name of the tag.</p>
| 50 | 2016-12-07T07:00:24.163 | I would like to propose a tag for Philips Hue |
|discussion|tags| | <p>While wireless and Wi-Fi do not mean the same (one could reasonably consider wireless as a hypernym of Wi-Fi), they are often used as synonyms. This poses a certain problem for our emerging taxonomy.</p>
<p>Either we edit posts tagged with either with prejudice and make sure the tag <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a> is only used for 802.11 related questions or we create a specific <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/802.11" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged '802.11'" rel="tag">802.11</a> tag and synonymize <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a> into <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wireless'" rel="tag">wireless</a>.</p>
<p>I'd prefer the second option for two reasons. We would not need to edit every post where someone uses WiFi as synonym for anything wireless and falling back on a hypernym never makes the tagging incorrect. Secondly, a specific 802.11 tag will only be used by people who actually thought about the technology and want to focus on that aspect.</p>
<p>Thoughts?</p>
| <p>WiFi is basically a technology for Wireless LAN based 802.11 standards so it is a subset of wireless.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Either we edit posts tagged with either with prejudice and make sure
the tag wifi is only used for 802.11 related questions</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the user tags a question with <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wireless'" rel="tag">wireless</a> which is basically <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a> specific then I suppose it's fine there is no need to do any extra work, if we want to tag it specifically we can edit it to include <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a>. I presume <strong><code>not many</code></strong> users know of <strong><code>802.11</code></strong> or <strong><code>802.11x</code></strong> specifications,so <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/802.11" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged '802.11'" rel="tag">802.11</a> posts will be less, here we can <strong><code>synomize</code></strong> <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/802.11" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged '802.11'" rel="tag">802.11</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wi-fi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wi-fi'" rel="tag">wi-fi</a> to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>or we create a specific 802.11 tag and synonymize wifi into wireless</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Synomizing <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a> into <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wireless" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wireless'" rel="tag">wireless</a> is <strong><code>not considered</code></strong> apt in my opinion as making so, one <strong><code>cannot specifially</code></strong> look for <code>wifi</code> related questions, instead they get all wireless related posts which contains all other wireless technologies.</p>
| 55 | 2016-12-07T08:49:23.603 | Wi-Fi vs. Wireless Tags |
|discussion|tags| | <p>So there is this initiative about <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43/keeping-tags-clean-from-the-start">Keeping tags clean from start</a>. I think this includes adding tag descriptions and excerpts as soon as possible. There will be tags, there are tags which are already presented on other SE site. </p>
<p>So in what circumstances should someone copy edit this tag information to save effort by avoiding the redefinition of a tag?</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontroller" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'microcontroller'" rel="tag">microcontroller</a> IMO will prevail, can we use tag info from <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/tags/microcontroller/info">EE.SE</a>?</li>
<li><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mqtt" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'mqtt'" rel="tag">mqtt</a> should someone update it according to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/tags/mqtt/info">SO</a>?</li>
</ul>
<p>More example tags in question could be <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bluetooth" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'bluetooth'" rel="tag">bluetooth</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/wifi" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'wifi'" rel="tag">wifi</a> and so on.</p>
| <p>There are two aspects to consider when copying from other tag wikis. </p>
<p>Firstly, attribution. While SE operates generally on a license that allows copying its contents it does require attribution. So for a verbatim copy of another person's work you'll need some basic attribution to the source.</p>
<p>Secondly, we should always have the IoT aspect in mind. Tag wikis are not about copying the wiki article from Wikipedia or another SE. They are about how the tag should be used on this site.</p>
<p>Thus, I don't think simply copying any tag wikis is a good idea.</p>
<p>I have made a post about tag wikis in general on ELU.meta (<a href="https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9442/suggested-tag-wiki-blueprint">English.StackExchange Tag Wiki Blueprint and Guideline</a><sup>1</sup>) and I would not mind if we'd use a similar structure on this site.</p>
<p>The two most important things:</p>
<ul>
<li>Keep it short and simple. Nobody wants to read a novel. Whoever wants to read up on the topic should go to the actual Wikipedia.</li>
<li>The tag wiki excerpts take precedence. Those provide overlay information when the tag is used. That has a lot higher visibility.</li>
</ul>
<p>Also keep this blog entry in mind <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/">Redesigned Tag Page.</a></p>
<hr>
<p><sub>1 Disclaimer, that's one of my posts.</sub></p>
| 57 | 2016-12-07T09:58:04.703 | When is it acceptable to copy edit a tag wiki excerpt and description from other SE site? |
|discussion|site-scope|vote-to-close| | <p>We already have post regarding regular votes (<a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1/vote-early-vote-often-seriously">Vote Early, Vote Often (Seriously)</a>), but I want to cast a special light on close votes. Private beta is about making the scope of the site more clear. Thus, trying to close questions you think are not a good fit is essential.</p>
<p>Don't hesitate to vote to close questions you think are a bad fit. People will either agree or disagree, by joining your close vote, abstaining or challenging you on meta. Either way every discussion about what's on scope and what's not on scope is a good discussion. It sharpens the scope and sets precedents we can work with.</p>
<p>Remember you can access the review queues earlier and have the privilege to close vote as long as we are in private beta even without those 2k reputation. It's a basic privilege in private beta. Also remember if you bring something to meta and it's not well received, you do not lose reputation on meta for down voting or being down voted. So vote on meta on those on-topic questions.</p>
| <p>It seem important at this stage to differentiate between down-voting an on-topic but poorly researched question, and voting to close. I tend to vote <code>unclear</code> maybe too frequently on other sites - I think we need to make special effort here, this week, to rescue weak questions (which means more comments on the questions emphasising this topic)</p>
| 58 | 2016-12-07T10:16:01.780 | You have the power. Use your close votes! |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>A few recent questions have asked about how a specific IoT device should be constructed, like so:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/32/how-could-i-create-an-lpg-indicator">How could I create an LPG indicator?</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It's almost certain that these questions will be <strong>too broad</strong>, but it's worth considering whether these are actually on-topic at all - are these questions really <strong>about</strong> IoT or are they just software and hardware design questions in disguise?</p>
<p>I propose that we create a canned off-topic reason for these sorts of questions; something like this would be ideal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Questions asking about <strong>how an IoT device should be constructed</strong> are off-topic at Internet of Things because they are often not related to the topic of IoT, rather they are questions regarding hardware and software design. Consider asking about <strong>specific</strong> design choices rather than asking <em>"how should I build this?"</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As I discussed in a comment below, I think that a <strong>lot</strong> of software/hardware questions are beyond the scope of this site anyway:</p>
<ul>
<li>questions about <strong>problems</strong> with code are on-topic at <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/">Stack Overflow</a></li>
<li>questions about hardware problems when designing a circuit may be on topic at <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/">Electrical Engineering</a></li>
<li>'shopping' questions asking us to find resources or the best tools/devices/libraries to use are off-topic on all Stack Exchange sites.</li>
</ul>
<p>There is certainly precedent on Stack Overflow and other SE sites to make certain classes of questions that are <em>mostly</em> closable anyway off-topic completely. Take, for example, the "debugging help" reason on Stack Overflow:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Questions seeking debugging help ("why isn't this code working?") must include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. Questions without a clear problem statement are not useful to other readers. See: How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These will often be 'unclear what you're asking' anyway, <strong>but</strong> Stack Overflow make it clear that this class of question is inappropriate by providing an off-topic reason.</p>
<p>The reason I chose the wording, 'Consider asking about specific design choices rather than asking "how should I build this?"' is because I would imagine there are <em>some</em> questions that can be good and on-topic for the site. Questions asking "Why should I use _____ for an internet-connected LPG indicator?" could easily form a great question, but could start out as something like the example I linked at the start of the question.</p>
<p>In summary:</p>
<ul>
<li>making "build my device" questions off-topic sends a clear signal that these aren't within the scope of the site</li>
<li>although most can be closed with <strong>too broad</strong>, questions about software/hardware might be out of scope anyway, so explicitly calling these questions off-topic could help to define the site (although this needs more discussion)</li>
</ul>
| <p>I disagree with this approach. If I understand your proposal correctly, it sounds like questions which are initially off-topic (how do I build...?) can become on-topic by actually building them, identifying specific issues, and then reposting. That sounds like moving from <em>too broad</em> to answerable, rather than <em>off-topic</em> to answerable. </p>
<p>If you're going to accept specific questions on hardware/software, but not huge 'spec my whole project' questions, the distinction is one of scale, not of the questions being on- or off-topic.</p>
| 69 | 2016-12-07T15:33:53.620 | Are "how do I build X?" questions on-topic? |
|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms| | <p>We currently have the tags <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/protocol" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'protocol'" rel="tag">protocol</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/beacon" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'beacon'" rel="tag">beacon</a> but the tag <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standards" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standards'" rel="tag">standards</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sensors" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'sensors'" rel="tag">sensors</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/kitchen-appliances" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'kitchen-appliances'" rel="tag">kitchen-appliances</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/over-the-air-updates" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'over-the-air-updates'" rel="tag">over-the-air-updates</a>. That's inconsistent. All those are either general concepts which have clearly defined elements like protocols (HTTPS) and standards (802.11x) or are very much countable like the kitchen appliances and sensors.</p>
<p>I'd suggest to make tags like theses plural and make the singular tag a synonym.</p>
<p>Thus, right now to create <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/protocols" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'protocols'" rel="tag">protocols</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/microcontrollers" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'microcontrollers'" rel="tag">microcontrollers</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/beacons" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'beacons'" rel="tag">beacons</a> with the singular versions made synonyms.</p>
<p>As Aurora0001 has stated in chat, a good rule of thumb is this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>my rule is this: the tag should satisfy the sentence "this question is about _____"</p>
<p>"this question is about <em>flash memory</em>" is ok</p>
<p>"this question is about <em>microcontroller</em>" - nope</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Emphasis mine)</p>
<p><em>Since nobody can vote on synonyms yet and the pluralization/hyphenation filters block us from doing this as users, we'll need the help of the mods which is currently the SE team supporting us in private beta.</em></p>
<hr />
<p>In the future we should make tags like these plural from the beginning. If we do so, the <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/187406/is-the-tag-pluralization-filter-working-correctly">pluralization filter</a> should prevent the singular tags from being created if I am not mistaken. I do believe it works for hyphenating tags as well.</p>
| <p>I agree with this, primarily because the alternative of singularising tags such as <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standards" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standards'" rel="tag">standards</a> would look totally ungrammatical (<a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/standard" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'standard'" rel="tag">standard</a> wouldn't mean the same thing!). There seems to be precedent on other Stack Exchange sites such as <a href="https://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/tags">Community Building</a> and <a href="https://english.stackexchange.com/tags">ELU</a> to have primarily plural tags, so we should follow this trend (and keep an eye out for any new tags popping up which don't look quite right!).</p>
| 74 | 2016-12-07T22:43:25.327 | Should these tags be plural? |
|discussion|tags| | <p>Since it seems to be <em>tag review season</em> (judging by the amount of recent meta threads!), I think we need to consider whether <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/edge-device" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'edge-device'" rel="tag">edge-device</a> is appropriate for the site, and if so, how we can improve the tag wiki and excerpt to make the meaning clear.</p>
<p>There is currently <strong>no usage guidance</strong> for <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/edge-device" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'edge-device'" rel="tag">edge-device</a>, but Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_device" rel="nofollow noreferrer">does have a useful definition</a> which we could use if we decide this tag is worth keeping. I'm not sure whether it would be better to keep this tag or just use a more specific tag for the situation - on the one hand the generality of the tag could be useful for some questions, but it does seem to make it easy to write broad questions.</p>
<p>Should we keep this tag and clarify it, or should it be <strong>burninated</strong>?</p>
| <p>I'm sure we will have a need for this tag in the future, but it probably makes sense to wait till we have questions which focus specifically on the characteristics of the edge device, rather than nodes which fit in the network at this position. I'd say that would be <em>concentrator</em> or <em>cache</em> types of function, rather than something like Alexa (which is arguably a borderline edge device).</p>
<p>Concepts like <strong>fog computing</strong> (where the processing and bandwidth is pushed out away from a central (cloud) server) might give a scenario where this tag is relevant in the future.</p>
| 150 | 2016-12-22T13:06:54.623 | Where is the edge of [edge-device]? |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>Strongly related <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178/on-topicness-of-embedded-programming-questions">discussion</a>. We should widen this site-scope discussion to handle all possibly emerging programming questions not just the embedded aspect.</p>
<p>We certainly will have questions about the followng APIs for example:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://mosquitto.org/api/files/mosquitto-h.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">libmosquito API</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hivemq.com/docs/plugins/latest/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">HiveMQ developer guide</a></li>
<li><a href="http://hg.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-management/raw-file/rabbitmq_v3_3_4/priv/www/api/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">RabbitMQ management HTTP API</a></li>
</ul>
<p>I consider these on-topic at the moment, but then we should allow questions about any other web-service API too.</p>
<p>Maybe some questions about scripting will show up as well so all in all we should cover/handle all programming question from the beginning.</p>
| <p>I have no problem with that as long as there is a certain connectivity/IoT aspect to the use case. There might even be some APIs like the ones you list that should be generally on-topic.</p>
<p>The really generic programming stuff without IoT connection, embeddedness or the like belongs on Stack Overflow.</p>
| 186 | 2017-01-06T10:18:09.970 | On-Topicness of programming questions in general |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>There have been several questions about web services and applications recently, and some have received close votes, so I think it'd be helpful to discuss whether these questions <strong>are</strong> on-topic for the site.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/665/what-happens-after-my-google-business-email-expires">What happens after my Google business email expires?</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/600/what-iot-services-are-available-for-storing-sending-publishing-generic-data-in-t">What IoT services are available for storing/sending/publishing generic data in the cloud?</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/503/how-delayed-can-ifttt-triggers-be">How delayed can IFTTT triggers be?</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, are these questions on-topic, or should they be closed (and, in future, potentially migrated to <a href="https://webapps.stackexchange.com/">Web Applications</a> if it is clear that these questions <strong>will not</strong> be on-topic here)?</p>
| <p>This is a poorly stated question, as it imagines a category of "web services" that is entirely orthogonal to anything which matters for fitting into this this site - and groups three entirely distinct things for common attention, which they are simply too different to receive.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Rather obviously the google business email question is <strong>blatantly off topic</strong>.</p></li>
<li><p>"What IoT services are available for storing/sending/publishing generic data in the cloud?" is a site-related area, but pretty much all Stack Exchange sites reject as too broad questions which seek a list of what is out there - <strong>Stack Exchange sites are for questions that can have a <em>specific</em> answer, not for making lists</strong>.</p></li>
<li><p>"How delayed can IFTTT triggers be?" This seems like an IoT question, and at least from the title an appropriate one (though as in the previous go-around, not all IFTTT questions will be device related)</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The diversity of answers for the three examples should demonstrate why it's hazardous to encourage thinking in terms of inapplicable categories - what matters not is if these are "web services", what matters is if they are <strong>about IoT</strong> and additionally if they are <strong>questions fitting the Stack Exchange model</strong>.</p>
| 188 | 2017-01-07T10:12:11.510 | Are questions about web services on-topic? |
|discussion| | <p>Now all joking aside and still being new to all of this, what is beta a version of <em>Internet</em> of things? Or is beta a mix of different meanings?</p>
<p>I am assuming we had an alpha stage right?</p>
| <p><sup><em>This is largely extracurricular to the answers already posted, but this is important to provide a bit of context…</em></sup></p>
<p><strong>This site is essentially "done" — released.</strong> This is a a fully functional, launched site. It is <em>not</em> "in beta" as you've come to understand it the traditional software development model, or "in testing" or something that failed to "graduate". So congratulations; enjoy your site!</p>
<p>The continued use of the words like "beta" and "graduated" in this context is an unfortunate misnomer (as you can see by having to ask this questions at all). I wish we would do away with it for the reasons I outlined in this <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/257834/98786"><strong>meta post</strong></a>. </p>
<p>Someday, hopefully.</p>
<p>One final note — pushing the "seven essentials" discussions (as mentioned in <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/a/201/2">Helmar's answer</a>) has often been found to be more harmful that helpful. There's no need to force "rules discussions" where there is no actual problem. Folks are more than willing to point out problems where they show up in actual practice, so tackle the problems when/if they become <em>prominent</em> in actual use — but until then, <strong>enjoy your newly <em>launched</em> site!</strong></p>
| 200 | 2017-01-10T16:31:51.157 | When do we finally progress "Internet of Things" from beta to released? |
|discussion|migration| | <p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/764/could-a-blockchain-really-prevent-malware-in-the-internet-of-things">This question</a> belongs on the <a href="https://security.stackexchange.com/">Security Stack Exchange.</a></p>
<p>When I voted to close it as belonging to another site, the only option I had was here on meta.</p>
<p>I have seen quite a few questions which clearly belong on Security; not to mention SuperUser, Software recommendations and even S.O. </p>
<p>Such posts will only persist if we allow them and do not discourage false-posting.</p>
<p>Is it just that I don't have enough points to see them, or do other sites simple not exists as an option? And, if not, why not?</p>
| <p>To me, this question is clearly on topic. Maybe the answers are a bit generic, but blockchain has been proposed as relevant to IoT, and that seems relevant (regardless of the answer and how much the primary discussion which supported the question was clickbait). Security is the big IoT issue...</p>
| 211 | 2017-01-13T09:50:16.047 | This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network |
|discussion|status-completed|tags|tag-synonyms| | <p>The tag <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emqttd" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emqttd'" rel="tag">emqttd</a> was created lately. Since the project adopted the short name of <code>EMQ</code> a <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emq" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emq'" rel="tag">emq</a> tag might be prudent (synonymized to each other).</p>
<blockquote>
<p>EMQ(Erlang MQTT Broker) is a distributed, massively scalable, highly extensible MQTT message broker written in Erlang/OTP.</p>
<p>Note</p>
<p>Adopt a shortened project name since 2.0 release: EMQ</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Source: <a href="http://emqtt.io/docs/v2/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://emqtt.io/docs/v2/index.html</a></p>
| <p>I propose we just burninate <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emqttd" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emqttd'" rel="tag">emqttd</a> and change all the uses of that tag to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emq" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emq'" rel="tag">emq</a>. When asking a question, new users will find <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emq" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emq'" rel="tag">emq</a> popping up as they type <em>'emq'</em>, and the tag excerpt can be edited to something like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For questions related to the Erlang MQTT Broker (formerly emqttd), its operation and the behaviour of the broker/clients.</p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>Ghanima has now retagged all the questions under <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/emqttd" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'emqttd'" rel="tag">emqttd</a>, so the tag has been destroyed under the nightly maintenance. In other words, this proposal is <a href="/questions/tagged/status-completed" class="post-tag moderator-tag" title="show questions tagged 'status-completed'" rel="tag">status-completed</a>.</p>
| 219 | 2017-01-13T21:11:24.323 | Tag review: emqtt and emq |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>In Area51, while I was browsing, I saw 'Internet of Things' and joined this community. The description was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beta Q&A site for everyday objects embedded with electronics to be sensed, monitored, and controlled remotely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But I can't understand the subject to be discussed here. (I want to know)</p>
| <p><strong>Internet of Things</strong> is not a specific technology, or dependant on any specific technology. Rather it is a stage in the evolution of connected devices, enabled by the availability of two things: cheap endpoint compute, and cheap ubiquitous connectivity. We have progressed from telegram, telegraph and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_old_telephone_service" rel="nofollow noreferrer">POTS</a>, through an era of expensive home and business computers, to a time when it costs only a few $ to enable any device to communicate with other devices.</p>
<p>As well as accessible connectivity, IoT exists in part because of cloud computing, and the ability to extract value from the large amounts of data which can now be collected very cheaply. A good example of this is collecting traffic data flow (by monitoring Sat-Nav activity on cellphones) and mass-transport route and pinch-point data (by monitoring cellphone MAC addresses as they traverse a physical space).</p>
| 237 | 2017-01-27T05:19:08.113 | What is IoT (Internet of Things)? |
|discussion|status-completed|new-users|help-center| | <p>The Help Center has a section about on-topic questions for this site, called '<em><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">What topics can I ask about here?</a></em>'. At the minute, it's essentially blank, being filled with only boilerplate information:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Please look around to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to ask and answer your own question.</p>
<p>If your question is not specifically on-topic for Internet of Things Stack Exchange, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may commit to or propose a new site at Area 51, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In our previous chat event, there was a discussion about what key points should be included, and based on that, and my observations of what seems to be accepted so far on the site, I propose adding the following information to the Help Center:</p>
<blockquote>
<h1>What topics can I ask about here?</h1>
<p>If you have a question about...</p>
<ul>
<li>controlling, automating and sensing the environment using electronics ('<em>smart devices</em>'),</li>
<li>consumer technology used for home automation,</li>
<li>industrial applications of the Internet of Things, or</li>
<li>the security, privacy, reliability and safety of these devices</li>
</ul>
<p>... and it is <strong>not</strong> about ...</p>
<ul>
<li>general computer networking, software and hardware</li>
</ul>
<p>... you're in the right place!</p>
<p>Please <a href="/search">look around</a> to see if your question has been asked before. It’s also OK to <a href="/helpcenter/self-answer">ask and answer your own question</a>.</p>
<p>If your question is not specifically on-topic for Internet of Things, it may be on topic for another Stack Exchange site. If no site currently exists that will accept your question, you may <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq">commit to</a> or <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76974/how-can-i-propose-a-new-site">propose</a> a new site at <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/">Area 51</a>, the place where new Stack Exchange communities are democratically created.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I want to stress that this is a <strong>first draft</strong> of what the Help Center could look like; I think it's probably a waste of time to try and enumerate every possible off-topic question at this point, which is why there are only five bullet points worth of guidance. I expect that we'll need to iterate on this (if we choose to accept it at all), which brings me to the point of this meta question.</p>
<p>It's probably helpful to have <em>some</em> guidance to show new users so that they can try to understand the site scope a little better; at the minute, off-topic questions are closed with a link to the Help Center, where there is <strong>no guidance at all specifically for <em>this</em> site</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>So, what do you all think about this draft? Should we include it in the Help Center now, or wait a little longer until we've got an even clearer picture about what is on-topic?</strong></p>
| <p>This draft is fine. We've been discussing it on a chat event and another meta post. I don't see how waiting a little longer will benefit is at all. If we discover that changes need to be made to the text later on, we can always discuss it over again and have our mods change it.</p>
<p>For now: upload it.</p>
| 254 | 2017-02-09T20:00:43.163 | Improving the guidance in the Help Center for new users |
|discussion|close-reasons| | <p>On Robotics.SE they have the following option in the <strong>Close --> Off-Topic</strong> list.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Life Questions</strong> are off-topic. Questions about choosing how to spend your time (what book to read, which class to take, what robotics project to construct, what career to pursue, etc.) may be about difficult decisions, and they are often important, but they are too specific to your own situation and are unlikely to help future visitors to the site. They would be better off asked in Robotics Chat.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The quote says it all, what type of regular questions brought this option alive.</p>
<p>I think recently we had a question in this category and as we did not discuss such topic so far I though that we should now.</p>
<p>As IoT is quite a popular buzzword there could be questions (very very broadly speaking here) like:</p>
<p>"I want to do some IoT, where should I start".</p>
<p>Currently it does not seem to be a serious problem and maybe we do not need this closing reason at all, but we can talk about it in advance.</p>
<p>Maybe there are three ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>We won't have some much of these questions, those few simply can be closed as <strong>"primarily opinion-based"</strong>. Maybe comment these words if they really apply.</li>
<li>Include this text only in the Help Center like <a href="https://robotics.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic">here</a>.</li>
<li><p>Add it as a close reason.</p></li>
<li><p>+1 It is completely unnecessary.</p></li>
</ol>
| <p>I think it's too early to add is as a close reason. We've got only three and we should make them count. So for the time being let's go with your option one and add it to the help center if we get a few more applicable questions.</p>
<p>For the time being can use comments and too broad / primarily opinion based to handle these questions—if they keep popping up.</p>
| 260 | 2017-02-23T18:05:01.247 | Discussing if we should borrow a "Closing question as Off-Topic reason" |
|discussion|tags| | <p>The <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> tag is by far the biggest on the site, with 62 questions (about 19% of all questions) tagged with it.</p>
<p>However, as pointed out by dsample in <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/a/268/12">this answer</a>, it's quite a broad tag. As far as I can tell, it just says "this question is about IoT in a home environment", so it doesn't really convey a lot of information.</p>
<p>It also doesn't match up with any of the tags used on other Stack Exchange sites:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/iot">[iot] on Stack Overflow</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/home-automation">[home-automation] on Stack Overflow</a></p></li>
<li><a href="https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/iot">[iot] on Engineering</a></li>
<li><a href="https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-automation">[home-automation] on Home Improvement</a></li>
</ul>
<p><sup>Note: <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/iot" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'iot'" rel="tag">iot</a> is not valid for this site, and is blacklisted because the <em>whole site</em> is about IoT.</sup></p>
<p>Could we improve this tag to make it more useful? We could consider:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>synonymising <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-automation" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'home-automation'" rel="tag">home-automation</a> with <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> and then leave it as it is.</p></li>
<li><p>burninating <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> and using more specific tags</p></li>
<li><p>narrowing down <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> to be used for a specific purpose rather than just anything in a home</p></li>
<li><p>doing nothing at all.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>What do you think? Share your views on the tag below, and if you have any good ideas about how we can improve <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> (if it <em>does</em> need improving), feel free to suggest those.</p>
| <blockquote>
<p>synonymising <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/home-automation" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'home-automation'" rel="tag">home-automation</a> with <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> and</p>
<p>narrowing down <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Smart-home should (here) be more about the <em>home</em>, not the appliances. I think we have a different focus compared with the other sites, we have some other big areas of interest (particularly if more developers start to come this way).</p>
<p>However, it may be useful for some users to be able to follow smart-home, rather than a collection of other tags. I'm still on the side of removing the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-home" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-home'" rel="tag">smart-home</a> where there is a better tag, such as <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/lighting" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'lighting'" rel="tag">lighting</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-tv" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-tv'" rel="tag">smart-tv</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/smart-plugs" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'smart-plugs'" rel="tag">smart-plugs</a>, <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/digital-cameras" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'digital-cameras'" rel="tag">digital-cameras</a> etc. Even then, we have a fair number of more general questions which are about the system context rather than individual elements.</p>
| 269 | 2017-03-22T15:38:30.747 | Is [smart-home] too broad? |
|discussion|moderation| | <p>I'm new to the IoT field and want to know about IoT. For some of the questions I need clear explanations which I don't get by google search. I'm a little afraid of down votes. Is it ok to ask very basic questions here?</p>
| <p>Basic questions are best if you can add enough detail in your post to show that you have done <em>some</em> research. This will also make it easier for people answering your question to pitch their answer at roughly the right level. There is a difference between a badly asked question, and a very basic question.</p>
| 271 | 2017-04-08T16:30:06.690 | Afraid to ask very basic questions |
|feature-request|status-completed| | <p>We've had quite a few questions involving code on the site now:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/1387/recapture-reset-the-first-frame-every-n-second">Recapture/reset the first frame from a motion detector every N seconds</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/1016/how-can-i-change-alexas-pronunciation-of-a-specific-word-in-a-skill">How can I change Alexa's pronunciation of a specific word in a skill?</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/q/741/12">Creating indirect (managed) connection between audio source and sink in CSR bluecore VM</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/q/964/12">ESP8266 fast HTTP GET response rate</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/q/1172/12">How can I free MEMB memory in Contiki programs?</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p>The <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/186/on-topicness-of-programming-questions-in-general">general consensus</a> (see also <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/263/are-questions-about-programming-embedded-devices-sensors-and-things-on-topic">here</a>) is that programming questions are usually <strong>on-topic</strong> provided there is a link to an IoT use case.</p>
<p>I think it'd be helpful to enable syntax highlighting here (using language hints, where <code><!-- language: lang-example --></code> comments are placed before the code block). Personally, I find it much easier to read code blocks with syntax highlighting once they begin to pass trivial sizes (even 5 or 6 lines can benefit from some syntax highlighting), so I imagine many posts will benefit here.</p>
<p><strong>Would this be useful to others, and should it be enabled here?</strong> If there's enough support, I'll let the community managers know that we're interested, but I see little point in enabling it if the majority of people <em>aren't</em> going to use it.</p>
| <p>I have edited our posts so far to enable the fitting code syntax highlighting. It seems like we don't have a real conclusive tag which we could set to a definitive language. If there is a more clear correlation in the future just shoot a notice to the mod team and we will set the proper default for the tag.</p>
| 274 | 2017-04-20T15:20:11.290 | Enable syntax highlighting for code blocks |
|bug|status-bydesign|badges| | <p>In my <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/users/1800/mico?tab=topactivity">profile</a> I have to follow smartHome badge instead of for example networking badge, which is my top tag.</p>
<p>The selector does not give any other option, it has only that one value.</p>
<p>What is wrong?</p>
| <p>It is said <a href="https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/335754/select-next-badge-tag-badge-not-showing">on meta stackoverflow</a>, that tag must have at least 100 questions before a badge is able to be earned.</p>
<p>It appears that this site is such a young one that only smartHome (and maybe some few others I am not active in) have reached that level so that smartHome is the only one qualified to the selection.</p>
<p>By now, networking has only 70 questions and smarthome 135, so that seems the case.</p>
| 362 | 2018-03-09T08:25:06.610 | Cannot select what ever tag for "Next tag badge" selector |
|discussion| | <p>If not, then how can word it? If not possible to be on topic here, then where?</p>
<p>Tl;dr - how can I detect the presence of a Xiaomi Mi Band 3?</p>
<hr>
<p>The full story:</p>
<p>As you can see from <a href="https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/10368/wearable-wifi-with-long-battery-life-12-hours">my question</a> on h/w recommendations, I am trying to design an evacuation system for a chemical factory.</p>
<p>That requires knowing which room each employee is in at any given time. I can handle the system to track the employees, but have been looking for a long time for a durable wearable with long battery life for each employee to wear or carry.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>I had considered Android 'phone, but they might be too expensive/bulky/fragile/short battery life.</p></li>
<li><p>A Raspberry Pi Zero W is cheap, but also quite large, needs a casing and I am unsure about battery life.</p></li>
<li><p>Passive RFID might not have the range, and active requires battery.</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-flora-bluefruit-le" rel="nofollow noreferrer">AdaFruit Flora BLE</a> looks interesting, but I can't find data about its battery life.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The I had an epiphany when I looked down and saw the cheap fitness tracker on my wrist. It's a Xiaomi Mi Band 3. I am charging it about once every 3 weeks, although I currently do not turn BT. I will need to calibrate that, although reviews give it 7 days of heavy usage, so it will be more than sufficient for a single day's use.</p>
<p>So - finally - to the question: would it be on topic to ask how I can detect transmission from the device? </p>
<p>If they are frequent enough (say, more than once per minute), then it doesn't matter what the signal is, so long as I can get a MAC address out of it and use that to locate the device.</p>
| <p>The question would be better with more generic phrasing, I think - as it stands, the reader is lead mistakenly to the specific brand/device.</p>
<p>Asking how to monitor a population of bluetooth devices (in any of the various possible states) seems perfectly in scope, and also brings in the meta/derrived sensing aspects of IoT.</p>
| 377 | 2019-01-06T09:55:47.067 | Is device detection on-topic? |
|discussion| | <p>I am looking for a board, and think that I need someone to say that they have used it, rather than googling for it, and can confirm that it does what I want.</p>
<p>I would like to program in Ada, so the STM32 looks ideal (I am also aware that the BBC micro:bit has good Ada support, but ...) I would like a board with a display, and, importantly, I want to use the the PlatformIO IDE's debugger, to enable me to set breakpoints, examine variables, view the stack, etc, rather than just print to the serial monitor. </p>
<p>So I need a board that supports the <a href="https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/plus/debugging.html#boards" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Platform Unified Debugger</a>.</p>
<p>Is such a question on topic here? I am aware of our <a href="https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/">hardware recommendations</a>, site, but doubt that I would get much of an answer there.</p>
| <p>You can ask 'does PIO support all Cortex-M, or only specific devices'. That wouldn't be an IoT question, and I'm not sure who would answer, other than the developer. This answer does seem to be 'yes' though.</p>
<p>Overall, I think these sorts of selection questions are best asked by identifying the selection criteria which would rule them out. This would probably come down to a minimum flash/ram requirement for Cortex-M, and maybe some RTOS support features (i.e. not M0).</p>
<p>I think the dev board selection is a difficult problem to generalise. There are so many different factors which make for a specific selection. Maybe the board which looks good is being replaced by something newer/cheaper. Maybe an over-spec and more expensive board is OK, or maybe you're putting 20 in different places around the house. Actually keeping up with the variety of different dev boards and IoT eval kits seems like a full time job, so you're always going to be out of date.</p>
| 385 | 2019-08-12T07:23:53.517 | Seeking an STM32 - is the question on-topic? |
|discussion|voting| | <p>The following question is pretty obviously (at least to me) unsalvageable, the edit was made to point out how badly written the question was and doesn't improve it at all (apart from to make it even clearer to the OP what was wrong with it).</p>
<p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/bluetooth-low-energy">Bluetooth low energy!</a></p>
<p>Can anybody come up with a reason for the reopen vote?</p>
| <p>I see a 2nd question (not a clear case for deletion, but still in need of work) is gaining re-open votes after a minor edit. As per the suggestion above, I flagged it.</p>
| 369 | 2018-09-06T08:18:20.437 | Reopen vote on question that should be deleted |
|feature-request|status-deferred| | <p>When looking at accounts on my profile, we have a generic logo. Lots of other stacks have cool designs.</p>
<p>Is anyone accepting design concepts for an IoT logo?</p>
| <p>You're absolutely right that many sites have nicer logos - and actually full themes - than we do. The reason is because we are still in beta. As it stands currently, beta sites don't have a full site theme, and all follow the theme mentioned in <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126185/new-stack-exchange-beta-theme">this post on meta</a>.</p>
<p>There is, however, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/307862/333472">a tentative change</a> coming, in which there is supposed to be a fairly major overhaul of the themes. There's also a <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/307862/ch-ch-ch-changes-left-nav-responsive-design-themes#comment1002231_307922">little-noticed comment</a> by Jon Ericson which suggests that beta sites may be able to work out their own themes once the changes have been rolled out.</p>
<p>So by and large, the answer is, <em>we</em> can't change this; we have to wait on the Stack Exchange team. Hopefully, they'll work something out. Probably in about <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19514/333472">6-8 weeks.</a></p>
<p>For more information, you can browse the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/beta-sites" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'beta-sites'" rel="tag">beta-sites</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/design" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'design'" rel="tag">design</a> tags on <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bbeta-sites%5D%2C+%5Bdesign%5D">meta.stackexchange.</a></p>
| 365 | 2018-04-19T11:35:42.290 | Iot Stack logo addition? |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p><a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/2577/my-thing-connected-to-aws-iot-but-it-does-not-publish-messages">This question</a> is the second by the same author asking for code only help for Amazon Web Services.</p>
<p>Here is my comment :</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I said in my accepted answer to your previous question, I am not
sure that this is actually an IoT question. Even if it is, you would
probably get better help on <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/">Stack
Overflow</a>. We currently have a total of
34 AWS questions on 3 tags, where they have that many ASW-xxx
specialized tags with many thousands of questions. Furthermore, this
question suits their format - post some code, say what it should do
and what it is doing wrongly. I am unsure here, and more
interested in getting you an answer than which site you should post
on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Am I correct to say so? I realize that we are still in beta, and every bit of traffic helps, but, of course, that should not be a consideration. </p>
<p>I honestly do believe that the OP would get more help on SO.</p>
<p>Is there even a question here? :-) </p>
<p>How about, "are pure coding questions on-topic"?</p>
| <p>The OP is trying to set up <em>AWS IoT</em>. That should be in scope. Short reason: It's right there in the name.</p>
<p>Also on-topic are any coding questions which have an IoT purpose. Stack Exchange gave us a site <em>to help out people who want to create or use IoT stuff.</em> Something along our definition of IoT devices (the result was quite fuzzy) and our discussed <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/349/new-year-new-tagline">tag lines</a> should set the borders. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Q&A for builders and users of networked sensors and control devices—be it for your smart home, industry automation or environmental sensors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the guiding principles around all new beta sites is that a question being on-topic somewhere else doesn't mean necessarily that it is off-topic on a new site. With the logic that there are more coders on SO (which is very true) no other site in the network should allow any coding questions. Obviously that's not the case when one considers the <a href="https://superuser.com/questions/tagged/java">almost 1800 Java questions on Superuser</a>. On the other hand developer-only focused sites do not survive the Area 51 process as <em>duplicate of Stack Overflow.</em></p>
<p>So yes, our <em>SE mandate</em> if you will does not point to <em>pure coding questions</em> being on-topic but coding questions <em>can very well</em> be on-topic on other sites on the network.</p>
<p>Are there more people on SO who know about <em>AWS-IoT</em>. Considering the user base in the millions—probably. Are IoT questions getting good answers over there? At the time of this writing there are 302 questions tagged <em>AWS-IoT</em> and 172 of those unanswered (i.e. no upvoted answer). That's a meager 43% success rate—well below Stack Overflows 71% answer rate. Other IoT-related tags rank similarly. Our 24 <em>AWS-IoT</em> questions however have only 2 unanswered with one of the latter asked yesterday. That's well over 90% if one calls that statistically significant.</p>
<p>Stack Exchange gave us a site to create out a place in the network for IoT questions. We're not here to duplicate Stack Overflow, but if someone tries to set up their future IoT solution and the solution <em>happens to require some coding</em> or the configuration needs some tweaks it's very much on-topic.</p>
<p>If it's about <em>basic coding problems</em> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1789945">like basic string operations</a> point the people to Stack Overflow, if it's more specific, especially with an expressed IoT purpose welcome them.</p>
| 356 | 2018-01-22T07:50:56.187 | Are Pure Coding Questions On-Topic? |
|support| | <p>Is there any way to follow my favorite questions to get notifications (answer, comment) to my messages inbox such as the question I asked?</p>
<p>If there is not, could you add this feature?</p>
| <p>There's currently no way to get notifications for favourite questions (starred questions). You can mark favourite questions like this:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/lrXem.png" alt="Click star icon"></p>
<p>The <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/users/current/?tab=favorites">'favorites' tab</a> in your profile will show you any activity on your favourite questions — the number on the tab increases, like this:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/BA7CP.png" alt="Favourites tab icon"></p>
<p><sup>Images from <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53585/how-do-favorite-questions-work">Meta Stack Exchange's FAQ</a>
on favourite questions.</sup></p>
<p>You don't get an inbox notification, but when you go to your profile and check, this will be indicated. When you click on the tab, the questions with recent activity will be near the top, and highlighted in yellow.</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/83343/336144">a request to add notifications for favourites</a>, but that was nearly 7 years ago, and it's still not implemented today. So, unfortunately, this seems unlikely to happen, and you'll have to use the alternative method I described above.</p>
| 352 | 2018-01-13T15:29:37.100 | Can I get notifications for my favorite questions? |
|support|reputation| | <p>For this answer... <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/a/2215/3640">https://iot.stackexchange.com/a/2215/3640</a></p>
<p>Admittedly not a great answer, but why does the Achievements rep shows +6 for this answer but the answer itself shows -1. How can that be?</p>
| <p>Reputation:</p>
<pre><code>One upvote: +10
Two downvotes: -4
Total: +6
</code></pre>
<p>Net vote count: -1</p>
| 332 | 2017-10-19T15:59:05.267 | Why does header show +6 but Answer show -1 |
|support|closed-questions|exact-duplicates| | <p>I noted that the question: <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/1916/remote-access-through-carrier-grade-nat">Remote access through carrier-grade NAT</a></p>
<p>is answered, but not via a answer but via a reference to another answer.</p>
<p>The thing is that it is still marked as "0" answers and status as unanswered.</p>
<p>Is there a way of changing the status to "Answered"?</p>
| <p>That question is <strong>closed</strong> as a duplicate of a different question. There isn't any need to "mark it as answered" in any way, for a couple of reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Users who aren't logged in (and, for example, find that question through search results) <strong>will automatically be redirected</strong> to the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/1871/contacting-arduino-through-internet-without-port-forward">duplicate target</a>. Open an Incognito tab and click the link in your meta question to try it; you won't see the unanswered question!</p></li>
<li><p>Closed questions don't show up <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/remote-access?sort=unanswered&pageSize=15">in the unanswered tab</a> (note that the link there is for the unanswered tab of <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/remote-access" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'remote-access'" rel="tag">remote-access</a>), which the question is tagged with. It also won't count as unanswered in our <a href="http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/94224/internet-of-things">site stats</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In our system, a question is considered 'answered' in the unanswered questions tab if it has <strong>at least one answer with score > 0 or accepted</strong>. So essentially, in direct answer to your question, <strong>no, there's no way to manually mark it as solved, but there's no need to do that anyway!</strong></p>
<p><sup>By the way: welcome to the site!</sup></p>
| 328 | 2017-08-22T15:51:28.637 | Closing or mark questions as answered |
|discussion| | <p>Today, when I was looking in the Area 51, I found that the number of questions asked in this site seems to be 1 per day, which it says to be poor.</p>
<p>As I have noticed, SE will has removed sites from beta earlier due to low performance.</p>
<p>I don't mean to pump in low quality questions into the platform, I just wanted to know whether we will stand the crisis.</p>
<p>We need more people viewing the site and more genuine doubts and clarifications coming up everyday. </p>
<p>Hope we could contribute something towards it!</p>
| <p>Activity seems to be kind of level - we get good views, but not so many questions now. As a new field, its not unreasonable that we take time to grow - particularly since there is some overlap with existing sites (different ones depending on the questions). What will help is more <strong>good</strong> questions, more experts in the field, and more views.</p>
<p>So to help, share the best questions you find with your other networks, and ask good questions here.</p>
| 324 | 2017-08-14T09:14:14.113 | Will we go down with the number of questions each day? |
|discussion| | <p>I don't know if the question belongs here, but I have faced this mostly in this site.</p>
<p>When a question is overly difficult to answer and there is no easy way to tell who is correct, instead of up and down votes or new answers or constructive comments I see two opposite opinions starting to battle under the question and answer(s).</p>
<p>To tell that answer is wrong you can vote down and comment, but if things go arguing, I would go to chat. My first meta post was such case, then I moved the arguing to meta.</p>
<p>Is chat the correct place for arguing or should we just shoot down answers little bit with less arguing? Mostly I refer to cases where the opposite opinions are clear by first time said and the point of comments is more to say the last word than to be constructive.</p>
| <p>First things first. You're in the right place.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don't know if the question belongs here, but I have faced this mostly in this site.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<p>To tell that answer is wrong you can vote down and comment, but if things go arguing, I would go to chat. My first meta post was such case, then I moved the arguing to meta.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, meta is very much the right place to go. For asking about how the site works and where to do what that is.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Meta is our community for discussing the site itself, including bugs, feedback, and governance issues. — Help Center</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Meta is where you can discuss and influence the things that don't sit right with you on a more general level. While there are discussions about specific questions on meta, most meta questions deal with general topics and try to add a level of abstraction to the problem. Now to your actual question.</p>
<h2>Where to argue?</h2>
<p>Generally there's five types of reaction open to you if you disagree with an answer.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Write a better answer</strong> — Stack Exchange is a Q&A site. It's not a forum. <em>Good answers rise to the top.</em> While I don't advocate letting bad content linger the preferred option is to offer good content instead. Especially when it's not so clear cut who's <em>correct</em>.</li>
<li><strong>Comment</strong> on the answer<sup><sup><sub>1</sub></sup></sup> — very much do remember <em><strong>Be Nice</strong></em> there. It's the most cited and highest listed policy on the network for a reason. The goal of a comment should always be to increase the respective post. <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/a/317/78">Aurora's answer</a> gives some great pointers about commenting.</li>
<li><strong>Edit the answer</strong> — Only when it's containing objectively and factually incorrect information. (That doesn't seem to apply to your question though.)</li>
<li><strong>Invite the other party to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/chat">chat</a></strong><sup><sup><sub>2</sub></sup></sup> — the system will even automatically invite you when writing comments after a certain amount. Mods have the ability to move comment streams completely over to chat. However, remember that the other party might not want to join you there or might not be available at the same time as you are. The Stack Exchange chat works very asynchronously. That being said, if your comment discussion is a back and forth chat might be the way to go.</li>
<li><strong>Go to <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/participate-in-meta">meta</a></strong> — Don't carry every discussion about whether Alexa or Google Home is better for a specific solution over to meta. Meta does not dabble in solving the questions on the main site and it's not an escalation level to prove you were right — or even worse to prove someone else was wrong. For everything else meta is the right place.</li>
</ul>
<p>You'll observe that none of the options above involves getting into bipartisan discussions about questions or answers in the comments. Trench warfare in the comments to have the last word is not what comments are for.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Comments are temporary "Post-It" notes left on a question or answer. — Help Center</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There's a reason for <em>commenting on other people's posts</em> requiring the most reputation from all options mentioned above. They also do not generate reputation are to be seen as <em>temporary.</em> Don't pour effort into winning comment matches.</p>
<p>We — as mods — treat comments very much as the ephemeral virtual Post-It notes they are and delete tons of them. These are the reasons for deleting comments: <em>Violates Be Nice, no longer needed, too chatty and otherwise unnecessary</em>. That encompasses almost every <em>I-want-the-last-level-word-debate</em>. If you stumble across such debates or find yourself as a part of it feel free to flag it.</p>
<p>To summarize, every time you feel it's gotten to the point where it's just about having the last word and you wan't it. Don't.</p>
<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/386/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/7G9iH.png" alt="XKCD 386: Duty Calls!" /></a></p>
<hr />
<p><sub>1: Don't worry about anyone's reputation. If you comment on a new user's post they can comment to answer there. The 50 reputation barrier only applies to other people's posts.</sub></p>
<p><sub>2: Remember that chat requires 20 reputation.</sub></p>
| 316 | 2017-07-22T17:44:54.537 | Correct way and place for arguing |
|discussion|site-scope|answers| | <p>There is a vast discussion around <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/1764/with-a-smartthings-system-what-is-the-result-of-marking-an-alert-as-a-false-ala/1789">this question and its answers</a>, where it is difficult to say who is wrong and right.</p>
<p>The question is about a function in a software, where a quite short text</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You will also have the option to check the box saying This was a false alarm. This is for internal tracking and helps us improve Smart Home Monitor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>tells how the specific part of software is used by the software.</p>
<p>If no more information is given online by the manufacturer of the software, why should there be more speculation of the purpose? Another answer tries that, and is getting down votes.</p>
<p>In both cases these options are basically what you can say and is it about the answerers responsibility if there is not possible way to answer in long format to this without taking answers from your head?</p>
| <blockquote>
<p>Any answer that gets the asker going in the right direction is helpful, but do try to mention any limitations, assumptions or simplifications in your answer. Brevity is acceptable, but fuller explanations are better. - <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer">The help center of every Stack Exchange site.</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In most questions worth asking there is information that is not readily available on #1 of a google search. Providing such information from a credible source — and I do consider the manufacturer of a device a credible, authoritative source — is always helpful. </p>
<p>To every question there is a literal interpretation and the interpretation of intent. The literal question in this case was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Is there, at this point, a purpose for the "false alarm" response? What does marking an alert as a false alarm do?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The answer with the quote from the manufacturer does in fact answer this on a high level. <em>There is no customer functionality. It's used for internal purposes.</em></p>
<p>Of course, it can be argued that he question that is not written is actually more a long the lines of, "which button should we press?"</p>
<p>Does your answer answer that question? No it does not. It only informs the decision that the OP can now make. Could the answer be improved by giving a recommendation? Sure. Is a recommendation necessary to answer the question as written? No.</p>
<p>There's another problem that in my view sparked this discussion that plagues many questions where the OP cannot know what information is out there. Sometimes it's just a snippet that's out there, but that's okay. If a better answer does come along from someone who found more information or maybe from a SmartThings engineer with internal knowledge that answer should get more appreciation.</p>
<p>Alas, sometimes there isn't more information. We cannot ask of every person answering to <a href="https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/395382/which-word-begins-with-y-and-looks-like-an-axe-in-this-picture">make a research project out of it</a>. In short, if you provide an authoritative or at least credible source that does point the OP in the right direction by either answering the question as written or as intended — hopefully both — that can be posted as answer. It's not pulitzer worthy, but it is an answer.</p>
| 304 | 2017-07-12T05:22:03.560 | How to answer question when not much information about the issue is available and you cannot fetch it by yourself? |
|discussion|status-completed|tags| | <p>I do see a <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/digital-cameras">digital-cameras</a> tag that is used to tag questions related to surveillance cameras.</p>
<p>I am proposing a separate <em>surveillance-cameras</em> tag which can be used to tag questions related to surveillance-cameras that have features of security, alerts, face recognition and are targeted towards the theme of surveillance.</p>
| <p>Yes. I agree that this would be useful. Feel free to edit that tag in to any relevant questions (the first use of the tag will create it).</p>
<p>Since surveillance cameras typically have more functionality than a typical camera might, it makes sense to have a specific tag. Having product-related tags may also be worth considering in the near future.</p>
| 301 | 2017-07-11T06:17:11.890 | Should we have a tag for surveillance cameras? |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>There have over the past several months been many questions about CSR Bluetooth chips posted, all by the same user. Many of these have gone unanswered, and there's no clear relevance to classic IoT goals or issues in any of them. </p>
<p>Additionally, many of the older questions seem to be about Bluetooth Audio - which typically means the classic BT headpiece or speaker type of application.</p>
<p>Are these on topic just because someone "could" use Bluetooth for an IoT purpose, even absent any suggesting that they are doing so or that such a desire has any specific relevance to the question being asked? Or especially when there are counterindications that the application is not IoT, for example in the audio questions?</p>
<p>Some points to consider:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>There is a long history of covering similar questions about details of competing BLE-enabled MCU from Nordic and TI on Electronics Stack Exchange. If CSR has less coverage there, it's likely because they've historically made less technical information publicly available and provided their own support to the corporate customers using their parts. Is it healthy for the SE system overall to have two manufacturers chip's covered on EESE, while a third builds a tradition on IoT just because one anonymous user put it there?</p></li>
<li><p>There is a long history of covering both PC and mobile (iOS/Android) programming for interacting with both classic Bluetooth and BLE devices on Stackoverflow itself. This includes both traditional BT use cases, and some of the newer more gadget-like BLE ones, such as location Beacons, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Substitute WiFi for BT, and it would likely be clear from the popularity of non-IoT uses that generic questions are probably off topic unless they are closely aligned with an IoT need. Substitute Zigbee, and opinions might lean more towards relevance, but then, unlike BT or WiFi, the most well-known applications of Zigbee <em>have</em> been in systems of the sort which have come to be be called IoT.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>It's also worth noting that many of these questions are poorly stated - especially when considering the reaction that someone may get when trying to post them elsewhere. Both EESE and Stackoverflow tend to deal quickly with poorly stated questions on the basis that they are unanswerable, and that may at times be mistaken to mean that they are off-topic, when in fact well stated questions on the same topics have been handled there well.</p>
<p>Of course a question involving Bluetooth where <em>the question itself</em> was about an IoT-specific problem would be clearly on topic, and if well stated appropriate here. The meta question is rather if being about Bluetooth alone is enough for a question to qualify as on topic, <em>absent</em> any IoT specificity to what is being <em>asked</em>.</p>
| <p>No. Generic Bluetooth Questions which do not actually invoke any IoT-specific application are, <strong>off topic</strong> and should be closed unless edited to show a specific relevance of the question actually asked.</p>
<p>This would be in keeping with Wifi and similar generic <em>communication</em> questions where the <em>means of communication</em> does not make something "IoT", but the <em>information</em> being communicated could. </p>
| 299 | 2017-07-07T15:19:00.950 | Are Generic Bluetooth Questions on Topic Here? |
|discussion|site-scope|closed-questions| | <p>Referring to comments in question <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/q/976/571">"How can I find Narrow band IoT module or chipset? [on hold]"</a></p>
<p>In the comments it is argued that "it is of an essentially transient value. In other words, the answer cannot remain the same long-term".</p>
<p>Surely you cannot propose that questions only remain open if the answer is valid until the end of time? It is my understanding from the Stack Overflow origins is that the upvoting and editing format exists <strong>precisely</strong> to allow questions to be re-answered over time. Granted, it doesn't always work, but is the general idea.</p>
<p>We are wanting people to come here and ask (basic) questions on a new and emerging field of technology, but we close questions because, although they are right now, <em>may</em> not be right in future? I think that it is banal over-moderating that will chase people away when it is needed the most. The Area 51 stats say that the number of questions asked per day "Needs work", but people are discouraged from asking questions. It's absurd.</p>
<p>Indeed one of the most popular questions is almost guaranteed to be irrelevant in a years time. Are the moderators suggesting that "How can I stop Alexa from ordering things if it hears a voice on TV" be closed because it is highly likely, considering the mainstream news attention that this problem has received, that Amazon is going to correct it on the next version? </p>
| <p>Sometimes, the stated close reason is a shorthand for saying <em>you don't seem to have put any real thought into reasearching this subject, or maybe you are just really out of your depth</em>. </p>
<p>The trade-off is really in working out how to encourage people to do more work before asking a question. If these borderline questions don't get closed, I think it sets the wrong expectation for what will be answered, and that will discourage the regular users who are already here.</p>
<p>The question in case didn't seem useful <em>right now</em>, let alone in 6 months time. Seeing your answer makes the subject more relevant - but the ideal version of the question would set out the timeline of these protocols, and question if they are slideware, vapourware or about to break into primetime. A question which would be suitable for the same answer you wrote...</p>
| 249 | 2017-02-08T19:22:41.077 | Should questions be closed as off-topic because "any answer will be of transient value"? |
|support|badges|voting| | <p>I was fairly intensely running through a bunch of older posts this morning and used up all 40 of my votes. When I try to upvote a question, I see:</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QjvtC.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/QjvtC.png" alt="vote limit error message"></a></p>
<p>Totally normal. What isn't normal is that the Vox Populi Progress remains at 38/40, and has done for the past hour or so. Usually, it takes a few minutes, but this seems a bit long.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/9KpiJ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/9KpiJ.png" alt="vox populi badge counter at 38 of 40"></a></p>
<p>Is this a bug, or do is it taking a bit longer to come?</p>
| <p>You <strong>aren't guaranteed 40 votes per day</strong>, which may seem confusing (and I think it <em>is</em>!), so here are the rules, summarised from <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5212/what-are-the-limits-on-how-i-can-cast-change-and-retract-votes"><em>What are the limits on how I can cast, change, and retract votes?</em></a> on Meta Stack Exchange:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/90209/336144">You <strong>always</strong> get 30 votes, which you can use for whatever you like</a></li>
<li><p>After that, your vote cap is dictated by the formula in the first link:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>min( 30 + ⌊1.2×<i>Q</i><sub>25</sub>⌋, 40 )</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Where <code>⌊⌋</code> means "round down" and Q<sub>25</sub> is the number of question votes in your first 25 votes.</p></li>
<li><p>In effect, the above means that you must have <strong>voted on questions at least 9 times within your first 25 votes</strong> to get the maximum of 10 'bonus votes'</p></li>
<li><p>The other catch is that <strong>as soon as you see the <em>'_ votes remaining'</em> warning, that's it</strong> - you will not be able to get any more votes for today no matter what you do. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>I suspect you only voted on 8 questions in your first 25 votes (Q<sub>25</sub> = 8 / 1.2), giving you only 8 bonus votes. </p>
| 158 | 2016-12-23T16:32:31.043 | Vox Populi Badge not given |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>I saw <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/312/wiring-regulations-for-self-made-electrical-equipment-uk">this question</a> asking about the UK regulations for making your own electrical equipment, and it got me thinking: if someone answers it one way and gets it wrong, and the guy's house burns down or he ends up in jail, is the site in any way culpable? Is simple participation here taking on liability for interpreting laws? Should we allow these questions? Or, like <a href="https://security.stackexchange.com/">Security SE</a>, should we flat-out issue a "legal questions are off topic" edict, and avoid the liability?</p>
<p>The Help Center for IoT isn't yet complete, of course. But I'd propose that we should start off by either avoiding questions that have the potential to get people in legal trouble, or making sure questions about safety, legal, or regulatory, issues come with a big legal disclaimer: "neither IoT.se, the posters, nor the community are liable for the accuracy of this information; neither posters nor moderators are lawyers; even if a reader or poster on this site happens to be a lawyer by chance, he or she is not your lawyer, you are not paying for his or her advice, so he or she has no responsibility for the accuracy of what you may read; nothing on this site constitutes legal advice; the reader assumes all risks; no lifeguard on duty; do not stand on or above this page; blah blah blah." </p>
| <h2>Liability<sup><sup><sub>1</sub></sup></sup></h2>
<p>According to the bottom of the page of every SE site:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>site design / logo © 2016 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Everything any user posts is cc by-sa 3.0 licensed, which following <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the link</a> excludes all warranties.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Added to the terms of service <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/a/155/78">Aurora already cited</a>, SE and us users seem to be very well shielded against legal liability—as long as no one can prove harmful intent<sup><sup><sub>1</sub></sup></sup>.</p>
<h2>Handling Potentially Dangerous / Flawed Posts</h2>
<p>With my layman legal evaluation out of the way<sup><sup><sub>1</sub></sup></sup>, I say we shouldn't start marking some posts with legal disclaimers. The reason is simple. If we start putting organized disclaimers on some posts we create the impression that everything else doesn't need the disclaimer—furthering the false assumption that everything else can be used without any own thought at all. So let's not do post notices.</p>
<p>As the CC license tells us, there are no warranties given and it does not even mean I can use anything mentioned in the answer. Simple example, just because an answer mentions a commercial software, I cannot use it, I still have to buy it first. Even if that answer were to give hints where I could <em>find</em> it.</p>
<p>Furthermore, which legal code would one use as basic? US, because Stack Exchange is based there? The country where the OP or the answering user comes from because they happen to know something about that legal situation? Or err on the side of caution and pick the strictest law? How to find out which one that is? Do we stop with safety? What about privacy, security, violation of radio bands, copyright, etc ... That would require full-time lawyers to assess most of the posts on the site.</p>
<p>Neither we as users, nor any future moderation team will be able to catch every pitfall in every post. Even worse, if a moderator decided that a safety note is not necessary, the legislation or other bases for his or her assessment could change, so a post notice for such concerns would have to be re-assessed for <strong>every post</strong> on a regular basis. No voluntary staff of moderators and user reviewer pool however big can provide a consistent tagging with post notices. So let's not start with it in the first place.</p>
<p><strong><em>However, that does not mean that one can't as a user provide all the warnings one deems appropriate as part of the answer, question or comment.</em></strong> I'd even encourage everyone to rise the safety, security, privacy and whatnot concerns they have with answers because it will likely make those answers better. Better, safer content is always good for the site. If you do see answers that don't take important points into consideration comment on them, downvote or provide an answer of your own, that's everyone's prerogative as user of the site.</p>
<p>Stack Exchange gives us the tools to downvote, correct (by editing, commenting or posting answers), close and delete posts already. Those are the things that <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/">Stack Exchange moderation is build on</a>. Let's use these community moderation tools rather than using post notices that future lawyer moderators can use.</p>
<h2>Off-Topic-Ness of Legal Questions</h2>
<p>I think in there narrow confines of IoT related legal questions we should consider having them on-topic for now. The problem with every <em>real</em> regulatory problem is, that there are two sides to it, a legal one and a practical one. Generally laws are fuzzy and <em>living the law</em> is established by court rulings and precedence. Within the IoT domain there is barely established precedence available and the project knowledge of IoT experts might be even more applicable than that of a <em>generic legal expert.</em></p>
<p>If we as a community can't provide proper answers to those questions, we can always re-evaluate—or try winning a legal expert with IoT knowledge.</p>
<hr>
<p><sub>1 Not a lawyer</sub></p>
| 154 | 2016-12-22T19:23:03.973 | Should legal or code questions be off-topic? |
|support|status-completed| | <p>Do we really need an <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unmanned-aerial-vehicle" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'unmanned-aerial-vehicle'" rel="tag">unmanned-aerial-vehicle</a> and a <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/drones" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'drones'" rel="tag">drones</a> tag as well?</p>
<p>Both of the tags are used once, at the same <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/257/are-drones-considered-part-of-the-iot-by-any-officials">question</a>. I think one of them should be the other one's synonym.</p>
| <p>I have <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/tags/drones/synonyms">proposed synonymisation</a> of <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/drones" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'drones'" rel="tag">drones</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/unmanned-aerial-vehicle" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'unmanned-aerial-vehicle'" rel="tag">unmanned-aerial-vehicle</a>, however there is only one user eligible to create and vote on synonyms for the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/drones" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'drones'" rel="tag">drones</a> tag: myself, so the community is currently unable to handle the issue by itself.</p>
<hr>
<p>Since I am now a moderator, I have just approved this.</p>
| 148 | 2016-12-22T12:00:18.113 | Tag review: [tag:unmanned-aerial-vehicle], [tag:drones] |
|discussion| | <p><a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133/accepting-nominations-who-should-moderate-this-site#comment234_133">Since we won't be going public until 2017</a>, we as private beta users should make every effort to keep the fire burning until the site does get opened to the general public.</p>
<p>There is also a terrific badge to be earned by amping up your beta participation. <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/188731/338924">The beta badge.</a> Its requirements are very reasonably and only require you to do the following.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Vote 10 times</strong></li>
<li><strong>Add 3 posts</strong> <strong>with a score greater than zero</strong></li>
<li><strong>Visit the site on three different days</strong></li>
<li><strong>Do this <em>before</em> we reach public beta</strong></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>It will allow you to proudly pin a shiny silver beta badge to your <strike>chest</strike> profile that people will adore you for forever.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The one additional requirement the badge has is that we actually reach public beta. Luckily, everyone's own chasing of that badge with valuable questions, answers, votes and visits will help us get there. Hopefully, it will also broaden our pool people asking questions a bit.</p>
<p>Don't worry, our voting base doesn't bite. Only 7 from over a hundred questions have a negative score and no single answer is below zero.</p>
| <blockquote>
<p>Good news, everyone! The new Internet of Things Stack Exchange site is now open to the public.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Congrats and thank you to all <strong><em>nineteen</strong> honorees</em> and everyone else who helped us get here. Let's keep getting more people involved, asking more great questions and providing great answers. On to site graduation we go :)</p>
| 145 | 2016-12-21T13:46:10.980 | Take Your Once-in-a-Lifetime "Beta"-Badge Opportunity in Private Beta! |
|discussion|site-promotion| | <p>Looks like we are not going public this year due to holidays.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133/accepting-nominations-who-should-moderate-this-site#comment234_133"><strong>Please note</strong> that with the anticipated slowdown in traffic during the end-of-year holidays, we will <em>not</em> be evaluating this site for public launch until after the new year. – Robert Cartaino♦</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>That begs the question how we get all those despaired souls to this site who get new IoT stuff on the holidays and just can't get it to work. Has anyone an idea besides word-of-mouth to get the word out? Ordinarily if we were public those questions about all the new toys that don't work and our great answers how they do get to work would be highly searchable on Google. Those days will be full of questions by people who try to figure out how their new stuff works. We just have to get them here.</p>
<p>Maybe there can be special Community Ads that advertises us over the holidays. I used my unparalleled(ly bad) paint skills to make a sketch.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzAXb.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/NzAXb.png" alt="BestPaintSketchEverV2"></a></p>
<p>Do you guys have other ideas?</p>
| <p>I tweeted this image, and gained one user (with only 200 odd followers).</p>
| 134 | 2016-12-20T21:29:41.797 | How do we get the people who desperately want to use their new Christmas IoT stuff on the site? |
|discussion|site-promotion| | <p>As suggested in <a href="https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/a-recipe-to-promote-your-site/">A Recipe to Promote your Site</a>, we need to start taking small, focused steps to start getting the word out about Internet of Things Stack Exchange.</p>
<p>To help the site to grow, I think we should try to reach out to other IoT communities and see if they're interested in writing about us or allowing us to share a link to the site. I shared a link on Reddit recently, which seemed to have a dramatic effect on the <a href="https://www.quantcast.com/iot.stackexchange.com#/trafficCard" rel="nofollow noreferrer">site traffic</a> (I shared the link on the the 12th of December).</p>
<p>Are there any sites you frequent that might be interested in discussing the site or allowing us to share our Internet of Things Stack Exchange with their community? Once we've collected a list of sites that might be interested, we should ask them if they are happy with the idea once we reach public beta, and spread the word from there.</p>
| <p>Here are some ideas:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://askubuntu.com">Ask Ubuntu</a> (as per comments, I've drawn a couple over from there)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.ieee.org/membership-catalog/productdetail/showProductDetailPage.html?product=CMYIOT736" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Internet of Things Community, IEEE</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sap.com/community/topic/internet-of-things.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SAP Internet of Things Community</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.element14.com/community/groups/internet-of-things" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Element 14 Internet of Things</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/47399.wss" rel="nofollow noreferrer">IBM Internet of Things Community</a></li>
</ul>
| 130 | 2016-12-19T18:40:49.080 | Which blogs and IoT communities might be interested in this site? |
|discussion| | <p>Over this question <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/revisions/329/1">What does the Lively Medical Alert Watch Monitor?</a> (prior to any edits) the following issue has been risen:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why the upvotes for someone who can't be bothered to Google? The information requested is easily discoverable at the company's site mylively.com or by Googling for reviews, such as yahoo.com/tech/… If I had enough rep to vote to close, I would. This sort of question does not help our site at all </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Potential "lack of research" notwithstanding* - what is the level of difficulty for acceptable questions of this site? </p>
<p>So this is again a question about the expected audience of this site. Do we embrace entry level questions that seem easy to the expert and may be easily researched using the right search terms - a thing that is often trivial to the expert but not so much to any beginner - or do we not? </p>
<hr>
<p><sup>* Don't get me wrong here. It is of course generally accepted that a certain amount of own research effort is expected of users before they post any new questions - with the ever ongoing controversy being about the <em>How much</em>. Failure to provide this research should be communicated to the OP by downvotes, comments, and flags where appropriate.</sup></p>
| <p>I'll be brutally honest in what I say below, since I think this is an issue which can <strong>easily</strong> lead to driving users away from the site if we don't handle it carefully. </p>
<p>I think if a question is on-topic (i.e. it is about IoT), well-written (clear, not too broad or opinion based) and is likely to be <strong>useful to someone else</strong>, it is a good question and shouldn't be closed - after all, 'too easy' is <strong>not a close reason</strong>, and using 'off-topic' as a catch-all for something you consider simple is not appropriate in my view.</p>
<p>Meta Stack Exchange has a <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76928/clarify-ses-policy-on-easy-questions">discussion on site-wide policy</a>, which I'll quote for convenience:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The answer to your basic question here, though, is that yes - easy questions are allowed and encouraged, When people type "What is a regular expression" into google, we want them to come here and find out. The individuals whose comments told you to google it or go somewhere else to learn it were not following the site guidelines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, the issue I see as even more important is this: discouraging users with comments such as "If I had enough rep to vote to close, I would. This sort of question does not help our site at all" is <strong>likely to discourage other users from asking</strong>, which harms the site significantly. Imagine you were a beginner trying to learn more about IoT, and you come across the site and ask a (relatively simple) question. If I got that response, I highly doubt I would want to continue, and IoT <strong>cannot survive without new users</strong>. </p>
<p>If you feel a question could be easily researched, I have no objections to a comment like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Have you read [insert reference page you just searched for], and does that answer your question or is there something you didn't understand here?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What helps the site most isn't overly technical, theoretical questions that are difficult even for the experts to grasp, but the simple, practical things that lots of people are looking for the answer to. Failing to realise this could easily alienate enthusiasts, which is exactly the <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/79/scope-and-audience-of-the-site">impression that this user had</a> (which sadly drove them away from the site).</p>
<p>In brief:</p>
<ul>
<li>simple questions which help others are great for the site</li>
<li>asking what people have researched is fine, but remember to <strong>be nice</strong> while you do it!</li>
</ul>
| 114 | 2016-12-15T13:57:54.830 | Easy questions - or: Are there questions just too simple for this site? |
|discussion| | <p>I have noticed that the more prolific users of this site tend to accept the first answer to their question quite fast. Now there is obviously nothing wrong in accepting any good and thorough answers that address the question properly and solve the issue at hand. It encourages the user who gave said answer to proceed to contribute to the site... and that is a good thing. </p>
<p>However, there is also a downside to the quick acceptance of the first answer - it discourages additional answers. A question with an accepted answer is likely to receive less further attention than one without, i.e. it doesn't show up in the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/unanswered">unanswered</a> list. It is therefore worthwhile to at least consider waiting some time before accepting an answer. On other branches of SE a grace period of a full day is discussed to give other people a chance to give another (better) answer. </p>
<p>So, please do not take this post as an advise to not accept (as in <em>never</em>) well-written answers that fully solve the posted problem - just consider to wait now and then.</p>
<p>Further reading: </p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/248570/should-i-accept-a-good-answer-immediately">Should I accept a good answer immediately?</a></li>
<li><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work">How does accepting an answer work?</a></li>
</ul>
| <p>I tend to accept answers relatively quickly, under certain criteria:</p>
<ul>
<li>does the answer cover <strong>all</strong> of the question in enough detail?</li>
<li>am I happy that I don't want any further clarification that another answer might provide?</li>
<li>is the question old enough (<strong>definitely</strong> more than 1-2 hours if possible) to have given other users the chance to answer?</li>
</ul>
<p>If an answer meets those, I'm happy to accept straight away, and <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5234/how-does-accepting-an-answer-work">Stack Exchange guidance</a> seems to consider this acceptable:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Don't hesitate to accept an answer that is well-written, suggests a good practice and works for you.</li>
<li>Otherwise, even if there are answers that are good enough but that you're not entirely satisfied by, you might wait 24 to 48 hours to give other people a chance to give you a better answer. A question with an accepted answer isn't as likely to receive further attention as one without an accepted answer.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>The key bit in my mind is <strong>works for you</strong>. It's important to remember acceptance doesn't mean "this is the best answer", it means "this is the answer that solved the author's problem (in their opinion)". If an answer is detailed enough that I don't need any clarification from other answers, I'm happy to accept to say "this solved my problem/query".</p>
<p>Of course, I could turn this question on its head and ask <strong>if you believe that the question could be answered more completely, why not answer even if it is accepted?</strong> Even days and weeks after the question is asked, I believe it's only fair to read new answers and adjust the acceptance if the new answer is significantly clearer/more detailed than the previous accepted answer.</p>
<p>On meta, however, I follow a different policy, since accepting an answer represents a more fundamental decision on site policy in a lot of cases. If there is one, unanimously upvoted answer after several days, I will accept, but in any other case I think it's best to simply leave questions with no accepted answer to give the community the choice.</p>
<p>In summary:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>upvote helpful answers</strong>, but don't feel pressured to accept when incomplete, but...</li>
<li>don't be scared to <strong>accept a great answer</strong> straight away, if it's clear that this covers everything you would need to know, and...</li>
<li>remember to read new answers and <strong>be ready to change your acceptance</strong> if the new answer is a better solution!</li>
</ul>
| 111 | 2016-12-14T20:26:08.460 | How fast should I be accepting an answer? |
|discussion| | <p>I was recently discussing self-answers in the IoT chat with Ghanima, and I think it's a good idea to bring this to everyone's attention: if you've recently encountered a problem and found your own solution (especially a problem that made you think, "surely someone else had this problem!"), <strong>asking and answering your own question</strong> here is <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer">not just permitted, but encouraged</a>!</p>
<p>By doing this, you can help in multiple ways:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>people searching for problems that you've already solved can find an answer, which helps them</p></li>
<li><p>you already know the relevant information to add to your question, so you can write a question with a sharp, clear focus</p></li>
<li><p>other people will find the site more easily if we have answers to common problems</p></li>
<li><p><strong>you might even get a better solution to your problem!</strong></p></li>
</ul>
<p>So, go forth and share your solutions that you think might be useful, and let's try to put a stop to this, all too common, problem:</p>
<p><img src="https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png" alt="XKCD #979"></p>
<p>(<a href="https://xkcd.com/979/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">XKCD #979</a>)</p>
| <p>I also agree with self-answering. But I would like to ask everyone to take time and write as detailed answers as possible.</p>
<p>I have seen some self-answers over EE.SE which was just a brief summary and the exact solution could not be reproduced based on that. While it is better than not answering at all, it may only give some unclear clues.</p>
<p>For example this <a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/276022/stm32l011-temperature-sensor-almost-constant-output/276303#276303">one</a>, where some clear facts known by the OP are missing.</p>
<p>So please do not forget to include such important points into your self-answers.</p>
| 109 | 2016-12-14T17:01:00.050 | There's no shame in self-answering! |
|support|status-completed| | <p>Since I reached 1k I have an annoying all-time present suggested edits indicator stuck at 8.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/UA5wb.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/UA5wb.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
<p>It's stuck at eight. At first I thought it might be the problem about my own edits being shown. ( <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109630">Number of suggested edits seems to include own edits</a> ) However, it did neither resolve itself with another actual edit I did since reaching 1k like it was when I reached 750 and opened up tag wikis. Moreover, 1k didn't give me any additional edit queues. </p>
<p>I have tried the usual culprits and opened the site with full reloads, cleared my cache and switched to incognito mode. When there are actual suggested edits it seems to start at eight, showing nine or more. If I clear my queue, I go down to eight again. It still works normally on ELU.SE.</p>
| <p>Now that you have the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools">“moderator tools” a.k.a. “10k” privilege</a> (1000 rep in private beta, 2000 in public beta, 10,000 (hence the nickname) on graduated sites such as ELU), the indicator shows the total number of pending reviews, not just the number of pending suggested edits.</p>
<p>Furthermore the suggested edit count deducts the edits that you've already reviewed, but the total review count does not even attempt to deduct the reviews that you aren't eligible for. That was deemed too expensive for the database. So the number you get is an overapproximation and is often uselessly wrong.</p>
<p>There have been numerous complaints and suggestions of improvements over the years. See <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/238472/review-count-fix-it-or-lose-it">Review Count - Fix It or Lose It</a>, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237845/wrong-posts-number-on-review-section">Wrong posts number on Review section</a>, <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/230742/notification-for-reviews-shows-way-too-many">Notification for reviews shows way too many</a>, …</p>
| 106 | 2016-12-13T22:33:32.723 | Annoying suggested edits indicator |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>Recently, there was an IoT related question about WiFi modules on EE.SE.</p>
<p><a href="https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/274690/wifi-enabled-iot-boards-with-ap-mode-and-ssl">Wifi-enabled IoT boards with AP mode and SSL</a></p>
<p>The question itself has been closed as primary opinion based, which it was actually. Also there was product recommendation request in it which is also off-topic on most of the SE sites.</p>
<p>IMO the problem with this question is that the OP ask too many things in a single question. For example the following questions can be quite useful:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are there any counterpoints in using any of these modules? I mean, do they "hang" like the CC3000 without a good reason? Can they be left running for months at a time?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As the OP has done a little research about the different boards. Asking which one of them is the most suitable for a long term application that requires high stability could be useful.</p>
<p>All in all my question is:</p>
<p>In what form can this question be asked on this site? What parts of it make it on or off-topic here?</p>
| <p>While I don't think that this questions shows a lack of research its two major problems are being too broad and still somewhat opinion based. </p>
<p>First important thing to make it a better fit would be to focus on a single issue - <em>reasonably scoped</em>. Right now it is asking ten questions and that's not a good fit for the StackExchange system where it is preferred to post separate questions instead of combining many questions into one. Put differently asking separate questions helps the people answering to focus on aspects the feel most comfortable answering according to their specific knowledge and experience. In this particular example a comprehensive answer would require knowledge on multiple platforms. While it is clear that there are experts out there that possess that knowledge it limits the base of potential responders to just those. Multiple specific questions gives users with "limited" experience (for lack of a better word) a chance to contribute - which is something we should encourage. </p>
<p>With regard to <em>opinion based</em> questions the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask">helpcenter</a> gives us some leeway if they are <em>constructive</em> - which seems to be the case here. I think that it is possible to have "which plattform is <em>better</em> suited for a particular task" answered mainly based on experiences over opinions and <em>explain “why” and “how”</em>. We just need to be careful to not let it slip down to a flame war about platforms but I believe that community moderation can put a quick and effective stop to such things.</p>
<p>... and there is of course the question which parts of the actual content are on-topic here but I will leave that to another answer.</p>
| 103 | 2016-12-13T11:46:32.277 | IoT questions on other sites we can learn from |
|discussion|site-promotion| | <p><strong>Where - and related: how - can we get more experts to join this site either now during private beta or later during open beta?</strong></p>
<p>We have to face it, IoT is a very wide field and contains myriads of different physical devices, technologies, protocols, systems, and so on. It is therefore imperative to have more experts join the site to extend and diversify the knowledge of our user base. More users could provide a different perspective and alternative solutions, thus increasing the number of answers per question (which is according to Area 51 quite low on our site). </p>
<p>So, what can we do to entice more experts to contribute their knowledge here? </p>
| <p>I've done some further research around this question, because it is almost certainly the <strong>most important question</strong> of this beta.</p>
<p>I can summarise almost all the sources and opinions I've read into three simple words, though, despite this being an enormously complex topic: <a href="http://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>content is king</strong></a>.</p>
<p>The article I linked is from an essay written by Bill Gates in 1996, and although his essay is primarily about monetising content from print media, this paragraph is particularly compelling:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This theme keeps popping up again and again. <a href="https://communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/a/951/2278">An answer to <em>Attracting experts to a young site with little expert content</em></a> from Community Building Stack Exchange (which is definitely worth 10 minutes of your time to read) is similarly keen on the creation of good content:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>First think about what you can offer:</p>
<ul>
<li>Why should experts of any topic come to you?</li>
<li>Why should they answer questions or discuss on your site?</li>
<li>What is the advantage of being active on your site?</li>
</ul>
<p>The first two questions can be easily answered: They should come to you because you can offer extraordinary content concerning the topic. To build this extraordinary content, you have to create content, and spread this content.</p>
<p>Content is created by users who aren't present right now. So you have to create some content with the users who are already there.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the moment, we're not doing a bad job at seeding the content with promising questions and answers. However, I fear this will start to feel like a chore if regular users are having to post more and more questions just to keep the activity up, so I think the <strong>only option</strong> is to bring in new users with questions, especially ones that are more practical and likely to be searched for through Google.</p>
<p>Ideally, you may argue that we should <a href="https://iot.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/114/easy-questions-or-are-there-questions-just-too-simple-for-this-site">reject easy questions</a> or 'boring' localised practical questions. But, from a pragmatic point of view, this is a quick way to kill the site - organic traffic <strong>will come</strong> from (in the view of an expert) simple questions and troubleshooting problems, so embracing these questions is highly important.</p>
<p>What you mustn't mistake is the difference between accepting <strong>poor</strong> questions and <strong>simpler</strong> questions - unclear questions should still be closed, and poorly formatted questions should still be edited - but we should make an effort to save content which may be useful to others rather than turning it away.</p>
<p>The key points are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>generate <strong>great</strong> content which can be found on Google by experts and novices alike</p>
</li>
<li><p>help new users post content that is <strong>high-quality</strong> - don't compromise and allow poor content to remain</p>
</li>
<li><p>an empty site, however great the older content may be, <strong>attracts no-one</strong>!</p>
</li>
</ul>
| 101 | 2016-12-12T19:10:50.567 | Where can we get more Subject Matter Experts? |
|discussion|site-scope| | <p>I recently <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/288/whats-the-purpose-of-a-gadget-snap-in-ubuntu-core">asked a question</a> about a technical feature of Ubuntu Core (and specifically its package manager, Snappy). Some users voted to close this, so I think we should start a bigger discussion about whether these questions are fundamentally on/off-topic to help define the scope of the site.</p>
<p>A good point of reference in my opinion is Stack Overflow. Their <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic">help center</a> specifically allows questions related to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>software tools commonly used by programmers</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Should we consider a similar policy for this site, where questions about tools <strong>commonly used for IoT</strong> would be on-topic? Would this make the scope too broad or would excluding these make the site too narrow in its focus?</p>
| <p>Software and hardware tools used for IoT should be on-topic here as long as the particular use case is directly related to IoT. </p>
<p>There will be an overlap with other branches of SE these tools will often be used for other non-IoT applications as well. This overlap is unavoidable and a redirection to other sites may be prudent if the question could be answered in a more general sense that exceeds the realms of IoT.</p>
| 99 | 2016-12-12T17:16:35.920 | Are questions about software/hardware primarily related to the Internet of Things on-topic? |
|support|deleted-questions| | <p>Has the question about monitoring IoT devices on plane been auto-deleted? Here is the <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/201/could-iot-devices-be-monitored-real-time-while-on-a-plane"><strong>link to the original post</strong></a>.</p>
<p>I assume this post was removed because <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/338924">the system will automatically delete any question (and its answers) or answer with a negative score when its owner’s account is deleted.</a></p>
<p>So I know the user got deleted, I don't know it's score, but it was closed so guess it might have been negative and I guess that took the question down the drain.</p>
<p>I think it wasn't to bad an edge question to test our scope with. Can we get it back? Maybe have Community own it.</p>
| <p>Yes, the question <em>was</em> originally removed because of the down-votes when the user requested their account be deleted. The handling of that question was unfortunate; I restored the post. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Unnecessary snarkiness in the comments. This is not a welcoming site. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The user is right. For a consumer-level question, how is this <em>NOT</em> a legitimate inquiry? It takes a certain level of technical snobbery to assume that how networks work or how these devices work is just an <em>innate</em> knowledge everyone is born with. </p>
<p>That aside, let's be mindful that it is really easy for a community to become insular and unwelcoming when a well-meaning question is treated like it's beneath them to ask. The user was embarrassed for having dare asked such a "retarded question." So they left.</p>
<p>Let's not do that.</p>
<p>It is helpful to remind ourselves on occasion to keep things friendly and constructive and to <strong>be tolerant of others</strong> who may not know everything you know. That's just good advice in general.</p>
| 97 | 2016-12-12T12:36:39.580 | Where's the question about monitoring IoT devices from a plane? |
|support|status-completed| | <p>I noticed that we have both <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/cameras" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'cameras'" rel="tag">cameras</a> and <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/digital-cameras" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged 'digital-cameras'" rel="tag">digital-cameras</a> in our inventory of tags. I don't believe they are both necessary... I propose synonymizing them. The only kind of camera broadly used today <em>is</em> the digital camera, and in the world of IoT, if someone is speaking about a camera, it will <em>definitely</em> be a digital camera.</p>
| <p>No. It's unfortunate that this action appears to already have been taken, as it was probably mistaken.</p>
<p>"digital-camera" tends to refer devices that are specifically alternative to film cameras, which generally means handheld and human operated. These would only infrequently be on-topic in an IoT context, and having lots of occurrences of that tag in external searches is likely to attract questions about general point-and-shoot camera support that have nothing to do with IoT.</p>
<p>In contrast, the kinds of cameras that <em>are</em> on topic in an IoT setting - streaming, recording, recognizing - while <em>implicitly</em> digital are essentially never referred to with that adjective. Adding it is quite unnatural.</p>
| 86 | 2016-12-09T16:53:35.570 | Merge [cameras] and [digital-cameras] |
|bug|status-completed| | <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCfYo.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCfYo.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
<p>All my icons for network questions apear as the little 3D icon...? Is anyone else having this problem?</p>
<p>Seems like this is not a problem just with the IoT beta (May have been caused by it?)</p>
<p>because it seems to have happened everywhere<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Nmsn.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Nmsn.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
| <p><a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/287848/164356">All Stack Exchange site logos are showing up as the 3D Printing one REDUX</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I actually managed to screw this up in a new and exciting way as we moved favicon generation around. Due to caching on dev, we missed it. It was a grep for favicon.less, but turns out our base .less includes it via: @import "favicons/favicons", which didn't show up in my grep of "places to fix".</p>
<p>A fix is building out now.</p>
<p><em>-- Nick Craver ♦</em></p>
</blockquote>
| 29 | 2016-12-06T21:16:33.517 | All icons are broken |
|discussion|support| | <p>Some posts I see here are lower quality. However, if I downvote, I'll lose reputation and lose privileges.</p>
<p>Is there a way for me to express my opinion on this new site without the loss of rep?</p>
| <p>If the post is low quality, you've the following possibilities:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Answers: If other users share your opinion and the vote has zero or negative score, you can flag it as '<em>very low quality</em>'.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If it has positive score, it's worth to comment on the post explaining your thoughts, so the author can improve the post (you can also suggest the changes) and other users can reconsider their votes, also this may alert other users who can share your opinion.</p>
</li>
<li><p>Question: <strong>Downvotes on questions are free.</strong> You can also flag them as <em>primarily opinion-based</em>, <em>off-topic</em> or as <em>unclear</em>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Either way, you should not afraid of down voting the post, because the owner of the post will lost twice as that (2 reputation). It is actually a moderation privilege, and it comes with the cost of 1 reputation which is taken away from you to avoid any abuse, so use it wisely.</p>
<p>See: <a href="https://iot.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/vote-down">Help Center > Privileges > Vote Down</a> help section:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>When should I vote down?</strong></p>
<p>Use your downvotes whenever you encounter an egregiously sloppy, no-effort-expended post, or an answer that is clearly and perhaps dangerously incorrect.</p>
<p>You have a limited number of votes per day, and answer down-votes cost you a tiny bit of reputation on top of that; use them wisely.</p>
<p><strong>What happens when I vote down?</strong></p>
<p>When you vote down, you are nudging that content "down" the page, so it will be seen by fewer people. Voting down answers is not something we want you to take lightly, so <strong>it is not free</strong>.</p>
<ul>
<li>Downvotes remove 2 reputation from the post owner.</li>
<li>Downvotes on answers remove 1 reputation from you, the voter.</li>
<li><strong>Downvotes on questions are free</strong>.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
| 21 | 2016-12-06T20:21:45.157 | I'm afraid to downvote because I will lose reputation |
|discussion|chat| | <p>Unable to find the general chat room for this new site and thus assuming it does not yet exist: </p>
<p>How should our main chat room be named? It is custom to use a clever play of words on the topic of the site.</p>
| <h3>Connected People</h3>
<p>The Internet of things are also referred to as "connected devices", so room with "connected people" using "connected devices" would be great.</p>
| 7 | 2016-12-06T18:38:31.237 | How should this site's general chat room be named? |
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