freddie43:
I think there is a 'not' missing from your final sentence
Oops, you're correct.
freddie43:
wasn't it a new IDE that caught people out?
No, the change was made in Arduino AVR Boards:
The same problem will occur with any IDE version if they install Arduino AVR Boards 1.6.21 or newer. You might think it's related to an Arduino IDE version because the IDE comes with the latest version of Arduino AVR Boards at the time. So if you install Arduino IDE 1.8.6 or newer, you get the Arduino AVR Boards with the new Nano bootloader. But ever since the introduction of Boards Manager, it doesn't really make sense to associate a specific Arduino AVR Boards version to an IDE version since any Arduino AVR Boards version can now be used with any IDE version.
freddie43:
Your Troubleshooting page is certainly a good idea and I would like to contribute to it
There will probably only be one more month left to do that before they make it read-only.
freddie43:
see it transferred to this forum.
I don't think the forum is an appropriate platform for this content. If I was to continue with the project, I would probably use a GitHub wiki, though it's not the greatest. I'll eventually try to do a big rewrite of the official Troubleshooting page and incorporate some of the more general content from the Playground page.
freddie43:
Maybe our last few posts deserve a new topic to attract a wider audience?
I think your other thread is fine for that. No need to create a new one.