Arduino Playground will be a regular website and not a wiki

We get a ton of posts here on the forum related to stuff in the playground that is wrong, misleading, or even dangerous

I think that's a serious exaggeration. I'm always on the lookout for those sorts of posts and they're not very common.

I know the mistake in the diagram on this page has been mentioned at least a dozen times since I first started on this forum. Yet nobody has done anything to fix it. And each time it has surfaced it has been someone who can't get the tutorial to work because they are following that erroneous diagram.

https://www.arduino.cc/en/tutorial/ShiftOut

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=592194.0

That tutorial is not part of the Playground. It is part of the read-only official documentation in the Arduino website. I guarantee you that if it was in the Playground it would have been fixed years ago.

pert:
That tutorial is not part of the Playground. It is part of the read-only official documentation in the Arduino website. I guarantee you that if it was in the Playground it would have been fixed years ago.

OK, so I don't keep up with all the little divisions. It's all Arduino to me. It's still broken and nobody seems to be concerned with fixing it. And I think that blocking off access to more areas just results in more stuff like this. Maybe if someone was taking care of things. But as long as something like this gets reported over and over and nobody can seem to come up with any idea on how it could be fixed then I'm not going to assume that things will be any better running any other part of the website in the same way.

Sure you may be on top of it now. But what happens when you get busy or move on.

"Unless someone like you cares an awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." ~The Lorax

Delta_G:
It's still broken and nobody seems to be concerned with fixing it.

You're concerned with fixing it. I'm concerned with fixing it. Grumpy_Mike is concerned with fixing it. That doesn't make a bit of difference because none of us have the power to edit it. Right now, at least there is a good bit of content we the Arduino community have the power to improve and update at will. If the Playground is made read-only, all that content moves more towards the situation with the ShiftOut tutorial.

Delta_G:
Sure you may be on top of it now. But what happens when you get busy or move on.

As long as it stays publicly-editable, the Playground is not about me. Even if I've moved on, anyone is free to do it.

pert:
You're concerned with fixing it. I'm concerned with fixing it. Grumpy_Mike is concerned with fixing it. That doesn't make a bit of difference because none of us have the power to edit it. Right now, at least there is a good bit of content we the Arduino community have the power to improve and update at will. If the Playground is made read-only, all that content moves more towards the situation with the ShiftOut tutorial.
As long as it stays publicly-editable, the Playground is not about me. Even if I've moved on, anyone is free to do it.

It sounds like we're in total agreement here.

Delta_G:
OK, so I don't keep up with all the little divisions. It's all Arduino to me.

Same for me. I hardly ever look at the Playground - I have no idea what is in it and no immediate inclination to find out. How much use does it get compared to this Forum?

I agree with the idea that the Playground should remain as a user-editable WiKi. But if the Powers-That-Be decide to change that it does not automatically mean that some other user-editable system MUST be created. There is always a great danger that experts feel that solutions must be implemented just because the expert knows how to do so.

I would much prefer if the Official-Arduino-Folks would provide proper support for their system (this system) and be visible and approachable while doing so.

I do NOT want to see some Third Party system emerge which has the effect of diluting interest in and support for this Forum. I have no intention of participating in two systems.

There is already too much fragmentation within this Forum and every day there are several wrongly posted questions. Having another system would just add confusion on top of confusion. We are all the time trying to stop people double posting. Don't give them another opportunity to do so.

Less is more.

...R

1 month after the "lock date" I can still edit the playground.
I seriously wonder how serious Arduino is about anything else than money.

Maybe they have changed their mind based on what has been said here by their customers. But are too embarrassed to admit it.

...R

Robin2:
Maybe they have changed their mind based on what has been said here by their customers. But are too embarrassed to admit it.

...R

I would call that unlikely for many reasons.
One is that the text "Playground.arduino.cc will be read-only starting December 31st, 2018." is still on the playground.

The CONTRBUTING.md file on the Arduino GitHub page also still says that Arduino playground is a publicly editable wiki: Arduino/CONTRIBUTING.md at 4c9da50e57030aebd4320fcc24e3f497f504b663 · arduino/Arduino · GitHub

CONTRIBUTING.md was written long before this announcement came out. That file should not be used as an indicator of Arduino's plans. If the Playground is made read-only, that file will eventually be updated to reflect the change.

What a strange change. I hope that this doesn't happen.

I used this wiki, for years, and here i found again the same passion for MCUs I had during the ancient High School days.
Technically speacking I'm not prepared to give advice to anyone, but trought the flowing of posts, i found both questions and answers needed to fresh my knowing.
During this years i have been able to give life to my workshop projects, and belive me it really makes my life better.

I just found this thread and reading about the future of the playground has motivated to make this post, my first one.
Having playground read only, not only a really bad idea, but i will change the role itself of this wonderfull place.

I decided to enrich my competence with arduino and its IDE just because of this huge knoledge base, so please don't block its grow.

I found what "pert" said easy to understand and entirely acceptable.

It looks like the Arduino Playground has now been made read only. When I visit the Playground, I am shown as signed out of my Arduino account, and when I try to sign in it makes no difference.

So it might make sense to resume the discussions here of creating an independent Arduino wiki that is solely controlled by the Arduino community members. Any news from ChrisTenone or terryking228?

Hi everyone,

I'll renew an offer to host a lot/all of Playground on https://ArduinoInfo.Info .

Or collaborate on a new other site.

I'm in Japan/HongKong the next week but on the web most days. I can put more effort in after the 15th.

@pert etal, what do you think would be best?

Regards, Terry

To reiterate, my primary concerns are:

  • Long-term sustainability.
  • Easy for anyone to participate, either by editing content or reviewing previous edits.
  • Transfer of existing Playground content.

Hello, and thank you for having had the Playground be an editable wiki in the past. In 2009, I contributed the "Much improved version" at the bottom of the following page:
https://playground.arduino.cc/Code/MusicalAlgoFun
I made edits to it for clarification several times since. Some random person apparently found it useful enough to credit me in a YouTube video:

When I saw that the Playground would become read-only, I thought "OK, I can't think of further edits to that code anyway." However, last night, it occurred to me that I could make the code more efficient and eliminate floating-point math from the loop. Is there a process in place yet to migrate individual pages to the Tutorials or ProjectHub for further edits? If yes, I'd like to request that page, and the pages to which it refers, be nominated for such a migration. If no, I'd like to request that an admin replace my code on that page with the following:

/*

  • Square wave tune with an Arduino and a PC speaker.
  • The calculation of the tones is made following the mathematical
  • operation:
  • timeUpDown = 1/(2 * toneFrequency) = period / 2
  • )c( Copyleft 2009,2019 Daniel Gimpelevich
  • Inspired from AlexandreQuessy's Arduino Playground - HomePage
    */

const byte ledPin = 13;
const byte speakerOut = 11;
/* That makes a standard old PC speaker connector fit nicely over the pins. */

long freqTable[128]; /* 10.5 octaves :: semitones. 60 = do, 62 = re, etc. */

/* our song: Each number pair is a MIDI note and a note symbol. */

/* MIDI notes from 0, or C(-1), to 127, or G9. /
/
Rests are note number -1. */

/* Symbols are 1 for whole, -1 for dotted whole, 2 for half, /
/
-2 for dotted half, 4 for quarter, -4 for dotted quarter, etc. */

const int BPM = 120;
const char song[] = {
64,4,64,4,65,4,67,4, 67,4,65,4,64,4,62,4,
60,4,60,4,62,4,64,4, 64,-4,62,8,62,2,
64,4,64,4,65,4,67,4, 67,4,65,4,64,4,62,4,
60,4,60,4,62,4,64,4, 62,-4,60,8,60,2,
62,4,62,4,64,4,60,4, 62,4,64,8,65,8,64,4,60,4,
62,4,64,8,65,8,64,4,62,4, 60,4,62,4,55,2,
64,4,64,4,65,4,67,4, 67,4,65,4,64,4,62,4,
60,4,60,4,62,4,64,4, 62,-4,60,8,60,2};

int period, note;
unsigned int i;
unsigned long timeUp;
byte statePin = LOW;

void setup() {
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
pinMode(speakerOut, OUTPUT);
for (note = 128; note--:wink:
freqTable[note] = 105600 * pow(2, (note - 69) / 12.0);
digitalWrite(speakerOut, LOW);
}

void loop() {
for (i = 0; i < sizeof(song):wink: {
statePin = !statePin;
digitalWrite(ledPin, statePin);

note = song[i++];
period = (note < 0 ? 240000 : freqTable[note]) / (song[i++] * BPM);
if (period < 0)
period = period * -3 / 2;

if (note < 0) {
delay(period);
continue;
}
timeUp = 120000000 / freqTable[note];
while (period--) {
digitalWrite(speakerOut, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(timeUp);
digitalWrite(speakerOut, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(timeUp);
}
delay(50);
}
delay(1000);
}

danielg4:
Is there a process in place yet to migrate individual pages to the Tutorials or ProjectHub for further edits?

It would be just as difficult getting edits done in the Tutorials section, since that also requires someone at Arduino with write access to implement your requested changes. In fact it would likely be more difficult since the Arduino employee will need to carefully review any changes made to a tutorial page to make sure it is something Arduino approves of.

You are welcome to create a page on Arduino Project Hub and publish your content there. It would be best for you to do this yourself so that you will have write access to that project. I do think it's very unfortunate to have content duplicated between the Playground and Project Hub. If you end up doing that, I would recommend that you request the Playground page be replaced with a link to your Project Hub project.

As for requesting edits to the Arduino Playground, I would recommend opening an issue report in the arduino/Arduino issue tracker:

I can't make any promises that will result in a fast resolution, but at least in the tracker your request won't get lost like it will here on the forum.

well, here we go i guess. just came into the Arduino scene not too long ago, and im still learning (long ways to go imo), and i was just about to go to something someone had mentioned a while back to me, about actually digging down and learning some stuff. not just about PROJECTS, but Arduino itself. Like the whole "storage" section of the playground, or "arduino on other chips".

but it looks like im too late, and you guys are sadly making the mistake official.

i hate to say this but, your "Project Hub" is NOTHING like the Playground. you HAVE to see that. they are no where near being similar. your project hub is exactly what the title entails, about projects. do you think that these projects are going to deep dive into the different things about each piece of the project calls for, or have really ANY valuable information beyond you being handed every bit of exact info that you need to make a predetermined project? no. at least not in the way that the Playground does.

i really hate saying this, i really do. I also know that my voice probably isnt one of much significance... but hear me out man: your Playground is what us new people that take this very seriously SCOUR the internet for, when it comes to everything else. your Project Hub is what someone who wants a quick fix for a cool idea, or just (no offense to anyone or anything) wants to cheat and steal an idea to impress someone, without actually learning what it is exactly that theyre doing.

to be quite honest, i can actually see a great future for the playground. especially considering all of the new types of tech that is coming out.

i really dont think that this is the best move for you guys... not at all.

you could just have this switched to where you make people actually submit the content, kind of like a pull request, and then some community leaders accept or deny the content.

idk. this is all really confusing. i really just dont understand why you would do this, its obvious that there are some very valid responses to the excuses that you (arduino) have given, and do you not see the benefit in your playground, and then do you not see how much less value there will be to certain aspects of all of this if you do this?

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