React feature guidelines?
I think we should try to come up with some consensus regarding how to use the new reactions feature, more specifically the "outdated" and "dangerous" options. Which kind of posts should these be used on?
Otherwise, I can see how these quickly turn subjective without some community consensus or guidelines. There are a lot of old things that could very subjectively and arguably be classified as "outdated". Though there may be perfectly valid reasons why they are the correct choice: price & availability, EMC, tool costs and so on.
For example, if it was up to me personally, I would for example flag any solution using 8-bit microcontrollers as completely outdated - which I realize is quite controversial and something that would immediately spark some off-topic 8-bit vs 32-bit debate in comments.
3 answers
Summary
"Outdated" should be used for "this won't work anymore today", not "we would do this differently today".
Detail
"Outdated" should be reserved for when an answer is wrong or misleading because something has changed since the answer was written, and it's not obvious that the answer applies to the older situation. Using this for editorial reasons, like marking anything with an 8 bit microcontroller as outdated would be an abuse and NOT appreciated.
An example might be if someone asked how to define a curved trace in CircuitBarf. An answer was given at the time for the current version 1.0. If the answer no longer works in version 3.5, then it should be marked as outdated if neither the question nor answer otherwise make it clear they only apply to version 1.0.
Note that we try to avoid questions in the first place that are likely to result in answers that are quickly outdated. This is the main reason that shopping questions are not allowed, or questions about what the "best" microcontroller is for a specific situation.
This site is new enough that any answer to a valid question shouldn't be outdated yet. If such an answer exists, then it most likely is to a question that should not have been allowed in the first place.
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Example of answers that should be classified as Dangerous:
- "Do it yourself" Q&A where someone is fiddling around with 230VAC electronics or other such potentially lethal power sources without having much of a clue of what they are doing.
- Potential fire hazards, such as modifying consumer electronics, cables etc where shorts or over-current could start a fire.
- RF experiments that may lead to sending high output power on the wrong frequency, or with severe out of band/spurious emissions. Which could in worst case block alarms/emergency calls on phones/emergency vehicle radio and similar.
- Dangerous answers to questions that are explicitly listed as safety-critical. Vehicle electronics, certain control systems, med-tech devices, EX classification etc.
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I think "dangerous" is pretty clear. It's when doing as recommended can cause significant damage to property or health.
For example, recommending to a hobbyist to make a direct line-connected capacitor charge pump power supply for powering his breadboard would qualify.
Dangerous does not mean you won't get the required result, unless not getting that result poses a danger itself. A bad circuit to start a water cooling pump of a nuclear reactor might possibly be labeled dangerous, but even that is pushing the intent a bit.
1 comment thread