This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
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.
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?
Welcome. Nobody will mind you asking something basic. The people most likely to answer are the ones who remember not knowing it.
Adding this to the thread rather than to the wiki, because I am not confident enough for the wiki.
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.
The general answer and the answer for your case may diverge here.
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.
Old habit: I write down the expected answer before I calculate it.
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.
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.
It is the kind of thing that is obvious once and never again.
This is the answer, and the reason it is the answer is the more useful part.
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.
I am aware this is the third time this month I have made this point.
Welcome. The short version of the culture: be specific, date everything, and say when you are guessing. That is genuinely the whole of it.
This is the version I would want a new member to read first.
Introductions are also a reasonable place to say what you are hoping to find, because somebody will usually know whether it exists here already.
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.
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.
The reasoning is more useful than the number, which is why I have shown it.
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.
That is what the documentation says. What happens in practice is usually close.
This settles it for me, at least until somebody posts a reason it should not.
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.
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.
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.
I would put a moderate confidence on that and no more.
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.
Posting it because the silence on this was starting to look like agreement.
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.
Agreed on all of that, and I have nothing to add to it.
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.
The short answer was in the first line; everything after is the working.
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.
Anyone with a larger sample, please post it.
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.
This is where my knowledge stops and I would rather mark the edge than blur it.
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.
That is all the detail I have. Someone else will have more.
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.
Someone will know this better than I do and I hope they say so.