Introducing myself: pharmacist, sceptic, reluctant participant

Introducing myself: pharmacist, sceptic, reluctant participant Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.

Introducing myself before I ask anything, since the welcome post suggests it and it seems only polite.

I have been reading here for a while without posting. My background is not scientific and I have found the documentation pages readable anyway, which I do not think is an accident.

What I would like to know is which parts of the site the people who have been here longest actually use, as opposed to which parts are most visible.

Marking my place. If it changes for me I will come back and say so.

New, no scientific background at all, and slightly intimidated by the first three topics I opened. Is there a sensible on-ramp for someone who is here for practical reasons rather than technical ones?

Take it as a starting point and not as a specification.

If you are arriving from somewhere louder, the pace here will feel slow. A topic can sit for two days and then get a reply that is worth the wait. That is the design working.

Someone should write this up properly, and it should probably not be me.

Welcome from staff. Nothing is required of you here — no posting quota, no introduction, no declaration of background. The only thing we ask is that a claim about a supplier arrives with the evidence attached.

Welcome aboard. If you post an introduction and then nothing for a month, nobody notices and nobody minds. Come back when there is something you want to know.

One more caveat and then I will stop qualifying: the sample selected itself.

Glad to see another member from outside the usual regions. The access and regional categories are thin for anywhere that is not the UK, EU or North America, and a dated first-hand account is worth more than any summary.

What to include: your name or handle, how you found the community, what brings you here, maybe something about yourself that seems relevant (clinician, researcher, person using these compounds, curious). Anything you are comfortable sharing.

Stating my assumptions rather than smuggling them in.

Introductions are also a reasonable place to say what you are hoping to find, because somebody will usually know whether it exists here already.

One case, stated as one case.

Acknowledging rather than arguing. The reasoning holds as far as I can follow it.

Community culture: introductions give you a sense of who is here. Reading a few introduces you to the people and the tone of the community.

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

Clinician voices are genuinely welcome and are asked to be explicit about the line. Several members here say plainly in every post that they are describing general information and not advising anybody, and nobody finds that tedious.

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

Nice to meet you. Say what you are interested in rather than what you do, if you would rather — plenty of people here are anonymous about their background and it costs them nothing.