I joined for one answer and stayed for a year — what changed my mind posts 61–90

Welcome. The orientation materials are pinned at the top of this category and they take about an hour. They answer most of the questions a new member has and they save time in the longer run.

Your introduction is well framed. You have given enough context that people can actually answer. That is rarer than it sounds and it matters more than it sounds.

It is the kind of thing that is obvious once and never again.

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.

That is the honest state of it as of this week.

The category structure looks heavier than it is. There are twenty top-level categories and you will use three of them. Find those three, mute the rest for a month, and come back to the others when a question sends you there.

That is all the detail I have. Someone else will have more.

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.

The step people skip is the one I have spelled out.

This is the first time the answer has come with its own limits attached. Appreciated.

One thing that took me a while to notice: the search box indexes maintained documents as well as topics, and documents carry a review date. If a document and a five-year-old topic disagree, the document is the one somebody has looked at recently.

Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.

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.

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.

Nothing above should be read as advice about what anyone else should do.

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.

One small courtesy that makes a large difference: put the specific question in the title. It is the single thing that most changes how quickly you get a useful reply.

That is the shape of it. The detail is where I would expect to be corrected.

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.

Grateful for the specificity. Vague answers to this question are what sent me looking.

First week here. The thing I would tell someone arriving behind me is that the answers are slower and much better than anywhere else I have looked, and that trying to hurry one does not work.

The general case is well covered; this is the awkward specific one.