Are there stupid questions here? A staff answer, at length posts 61–90

The Lounge is a real category rather than a dumping ground. The sourcing rule still applies there, which surprises people, but the register is looser and nobody minds a digression.

On the reading order question specifically: start with the how-to-ask materials in this category, then read the one to three subcategories where your main questions live. The rest will be discoverable by tag once you understand the structure.

For what it is worth, the same held on the two occasions I checked.

The Lounge is a real category rather than a dumping ground. The sourcing rule still applies there, which surprises people, but the register is looser and nobody minds a digression.

Adding it in case it saves somebody the afternoon it cost me.

Welcome. Two practical notes from staff. Your first few posts are rate-limited, which is an anti-spam measure and not a comment on you, and it lifts on its own. If you hit it and have something to add, edit the post you already made.

The mechanism is plausible, which is not the same as established.

The Lounge is a real category rather than a dumping ground. The sourcing rule still applies there, which surprises people, but the register is looser and nobody minds a digression.

Saving this. It is the version I will quote when the question comes round again.

Reading back through, this was answered upthread and I missed it. My fault.

There is no stupid-questions rule and no penalty for asking badly. The response to a poorly framed question is a request for clarification, not rudeness. That is a deliberately cultivated norm here.

I would call that likely rather than established.

The Lounge is a real category rather than a dumping ground. The sourcing rule still applies there, which surprises people, but the register is looser and nobody minds a digression.

If you are not sure which subcategory a question belongs in, post it in the closest one. A moderator will move it, the move is logged, and nothing bad happens to you.

If the premise is wrong, everything after it is decoration.

If you want a fast orientation, read three solved topics in the subcategory you care about. Solved means somebody said the answer worked, which is more signal than reply count.

That is the version I use. It may not be the version that is correct.

The answer to the reading-order question is: the how-to-ask page, then whichever compound page applies to you, then the sourcing standard. Forty minutes and it saves weeks.

The compound pages are the fastest way to find out whether a question has a published answer at all. If the page says the trial is ongoing, that is the honest state of it and no thread will improve on that.

I am not the right person to answer the follow-up to this.

The Lounge is a real category rather than a dumping ground. The sourcing rule still applies there, which surprises people, but the register is looser and nobody minds a digression.

This is the sort of exchange that makes the archive worth searching.