Let's get critical: Feb 2015 Site Self-Evaluation

Question

We all love Arduino Stack Exchange, but there is a whole world of people out there who need answers to their questions and don't even know that this site exists. When they arrive from Google, what will their first impression be? Let's try to look at this site through the eyes of someone who's never seen it before, and see how we stack up against the rest of the 'Net.

The Site Self-Evaluation review queue is open and populated with 10 questions that were asked and answered in the last quarter. Run a few Google searches to see how easy they are to find and compare the answers we have with the information available on other sites.

Rating the questions is only a part of the puzzle, though. Do you see a pattern of questions that should have been closed but are not? Questions or answers that could use an edit? Anything that's going really well? Post an answer below to share your thoughts and discuss these questions and the site's health with your fellow users!

Answer 1

Final Results

• Increasing payload size above 32 bytes using nRF24L01+

Net Score: 6 (Excellent: 6, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Can I use the setup() function inside the loop() function

Net Score: 5 (Excellent: 5, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 0)

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• Serial debug output looking messy

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• 5 Switches 1 AI pin

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• How to send Json to a webservice from pc/RPI with live data from Arduino(serial)

Net Score: 0 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 1)

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• Audio Frequency White Noise generation using Arduino Mini Pro

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 1, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 3)

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• Get the distance to non perpendicular surface

Net Score: -2 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 2, Needs Improvement: 2)

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• Wake up atmel-328 with external interrupt.

Net Score: -4 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 0, Needs Improvement: 4)

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• Servo motor swinging back to 0°

Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 3, Needs Improvement: 5)

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• Read temperature (DS18B20) with the ATTiny85

Net Score: -5 (Excellent: 0, Satisfactory: 1, Needs Improvement: 5)

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Answer 2

Serial debug output looking messy: Satisfactory. A great answer but required obscure search terms.

How to send Json to a webservice from pc/RPI with live data from Arduino(serial): Skipped. It needs to be closed because it's off topic and cross posted with Stack Overflow. I chose not A lesson to learn here is that you should not recommend posting on other sites until after closing it or you should flag it to get migrated.

Can I use the setup() function inside the loop() function: Excellent. Third result (not the first above the fold) in Google and it had the best answers that I could find. The first one was Arduino documentation that was unrelated, a second one was the Arduino forum with incomplete answer(s), and the third one was us.

Get the distance to non perpendicular surface: Needs improvement. Hard to find, no good answers.

Audio Frequency White Noise generation using Arduino Mini Pro: Satisfactory. Shows up high in search rankings but the answer selection could be improved. [SEE POINT #1]

Servo motor swinging back to 0°: Needs improvement. No answer that fixes the OP's problem (in my opinion).

5 Switches 1 AI pin: Satisfactory. It directly answers the question, but is a bit hard to find. Could use some editing.

Increasing payload size above 32 bytes using nRF24L01+: Excellent. Highest in search rankings, good answer.

Wake up atmel-328 with external interrupt.: Needs improvement. This question didn't seem to have a quality answer posted.

Read temperature (DS18B20) with the ATTiny85: Needs improvement. This question didn't seem to have a question

What we can take away from this:

1. We need to do a better job editing new posts to make higher quality (which might help some with SEO).
2. We need to answer more questions (hard to really improve).
3. We need to close questions efficiently. This is just more of a close a post when you see an off topic post kind-of-thing.

Answer 3

Related:

Questions are being sent
EE -> Arduino and
Arduino -> EE without adequate reason
and even yesterday
EE ->Arduino -> EE.
At least it got back to EE which it should never have left BUT there are usually intelligent people who have a literally blind hatred for Arduinos who go out of their way to make life hard for Arduino users and to abuse them and trash Arduinos generally.

The intended ethos of the SE sites is not well enough understood. In one recent example (last few days) a user double posted on two SE pages and somebody voted to close on one page where they had adequate rep and stated the question should be closed on both as punishment for double posting. That MAY have been an EE - Engineering crossover but the same ill will exists between EE & Arduino.

Better promulgation of the Stack Exchange treatment and behaviour rules' is in order.