Help Arduino Stack Exchange reach beta by committing to it

I think that whilst there are relevant SEs, the question will be moved the appropriate one if the people are as helpful as stackoverflow (all I have experience of). Which is fine, because it's in the right subject and gets the best possible answer without duplication.

The trouble comes with knowing where to ask. Lucky stackexchange has a searchbox that covers all sites.

They don't do that, they migrate the question. You just need to flag and ask for migration.

It's also not a hard question to answer; in fact, it seems like a pretty easy one to answer, and helpful, to boot. It's basically asking "when do you want to use a microcontroller instead of full-blown SOC running an OS".

Oh, also, that's a comment. That's for discussing the value of the example question. There's no "example answer". Once the site launches then there will be proper Qs and As

People entering a topic are always going to have "meta" questions. One of their first efforts may be establishing a proper understanding of context.

If you want to be a friendly and encouraging community, help them out. Don't chase them off; you've just lost a potential member.

That said, better to have a very good, defining resource, rather than to be constantly re-answering (in full text, as opposed to citation) the same question.

A few iterations of Q/A on the topic should produce a sufficient answer -- "organically", form someone with the time, knowledge, and communication skills -- to subsequently serve as such. No need necessarily to force an external context for such information/resources. Not when it's so easy to "deep link" to them in situ.

The site hasn't launched yet. Those are example questions to clarify the scope of the site. And yes, that question is a bit broad, can't do much about that. Broad questions on the actual site will probably be closed. Not sure about this one.

arduino.cc is about as polished at the standard IDE. :-)

I agree that a StackExchange site for Arduino, or even "hobby embedded electronics," which could cover the BASIC Stamp and other devices, would be a much better aggregation of expertise and information.

I'm thinking it might more likely be a nice "question doesn't fit perfectly on other sites" Stack Overflow type site: For those people the Arduino official charter talks about, people who don't want to get pushed into being electronics experts nor software programmers, just want to make magic with the Arduino as a user - intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments, as Arduino.cc says. I think it's needed, I hope it happens.