How to deal with design review questions?
A while back someone suggested that we added a section for reviews to the site - How about a new section for code reviews? From that meta thread we gathered that:
- There seems to be community consensus that code review is perfectly fine and on-topic for this site, given that the topic is about microcontroller/DSP firmware, HDL code or similar embedded systems software.
- It was proposed that reviews should not be limited to code but to all forms of electrical engineering. Things like for example review of schematics, PCB layout/stack-up and EMC design.
- There was no consensus about adding a separate category for this. Some 2 years later, we can conclude that review questions are rare and the few ones we have are almost always about schematics/design. There aren't many questions about firmware at all.
I'd like to encourage more questions like this - design reviews is a healthy process and excellent for learning and sharing everything from the fundamentals to handy tips & tricks, as well as for spotting errors that you as a designer are blind to yourself.
Since the tags are going through a bit of an overhaul right now, perhaps we should simply add a tag design-review with a tag description outlining what we expect from review questions? And in case this would turn out popular we can always create a category for it later.
1 answer
I agree with this approach. Categories should only be created when they are expected to have reasonable traffic.
A category with only chirping crickets is an anti-advertisement. Take a look at the Photography and Outdoors sites. They have lots of nearly unused categories, which I think makes those sites look even more dead than they already are.
Your idea of a special tag seems like a good solution for now. If by some miracle we get flooded with design review questions, it will be easy to find the existing ones so that they can be moved to a new category.
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