Here for the analytics and not much else — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.
Saying hello, and stating my interest so that it is on the record rather than inferred.
I am here for the documentation and the analytical discussion. I have nothing to sell, no affiliation with any supplier, and no intention of posting about my own care.
If there is a convention I am about to break, I would rather be told now than after.
I will take the caveat as seriously as the claim, which is the point of putting it there.
Six months of lurking, finally posting. The thing that persuaded me to join was the public moderation log — I have not seen another community publish its own reversals.
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.
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.
I have said this before in a thread nobody could find, so it is worth repeating.
Good to have you. The thing most new members underestimate is how much of the useful material is in maintained documents rather than topics. Start there and the topics make more sense.
The uncertainty is in the assumption, not in the calculation.
Welcome: the response to introductions is usually welcome. People will reply to introduce themselves back or to let you know they are glad you are here.
The short version is the first sentence; the rest is why.
No judgment: people come to this community from all backgrounds and with all motivations. Introductions are for getting to know each other, not for evaluation.
Posted with less confidence than the sentence structure implies.
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.
I would rather say I do not know than round it up to an answer.
Good to have another set of eyes on the wiki posts. Community wiki editing is open at trust level three and the queue of small corrections is permanently longer than the people fixing them.
That is all I can say without guessing.
Introducing myself: analytical background, no clinical background, here mostly to read the sourcing and analytics categories. I will ask more than I answer for a while.
Nothing above should be read as advice about what anyone else should do.
Introductions are also a reasonable place to say what you are hoping to find, because somebody will usually know whether it exists here already.
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.
That much is documented. The rest is how I have interpreted it.
Privacy: share only what you are comfortable making permanent and public. An introduction is archived and searchable; do not include information you will later regret posting.
The step people skip is the one I have spelled out.
Welcome. If you have an analytical background you will find the analytics subcategories the easiest place to be useful quickly — the recurring gap here is people who can read a chromatogram, not people who can read a trial.
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.
Worth saying in an introductions thread: reading here counts. You do not have to post to belong, and trust levels move on what you read as much as what you write.
Following up: if you introduce yourself and someone asks a follow-up question, you can reply here or in a direct message depending on what feels right.
It is the sort of thing that seems obvious in retrospect and was not at the time.
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.
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?
There is: the practice category, and the calculators, both written for exactly that. Nothing there assumes chemistry, and the maintained documents show their working so you can check them by hand.
Same conclusion as the reply above, reached differently, which is mildly reassuring.
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.
Worth one more sentence than it usually gets.
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.
Small point, but it is the one that usually catches people.