This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
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.
Since reading order keeps coming up, it should probably be a maintained page rather than a recurring thread. I am happy to draft it if someone with more direct experience will review it.
Marking my place. If it changes for me I will come back and say so.
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.
If that is already documented somewhere, ignore me and link it.
I would call the community position on reading order likely rather than established, and I would be comfortable defending that hedge.
The tag pages are usually a better entry point than the categories for a first read. A tag cuts across categories, so following one shows you how the same subject is treated by the analytical people and the practical people at once.
On balance I think that is right, and I would not bet much on it.
Worth stating the null on reading order before we explain it: the observation may be nothing. That possibility deserves a sentence and usually does not get one.
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.
Fine by me. I had wanted a stronger conclusion and there is not one available.
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.
It cost nothing to check and would have cost something not to.
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.
Two sources, same conclusion, and I could not rule out that one copied the other.
Reframing reading order slightly, because I think the disagreement is about the question rather than the answer. If the question is "does it happen", yes. If it is "how often", nobody here knows.
Reading the guidelines before you post is genuinely worth the twenty minutes. Not because you will break one, but because the rules explain why the place reads the way it does.
Adding it in case it saves somebody the afternoon it cost me.
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.
Posted with less confidence than the sentence structure implies.
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.
I would be interested in a counterexample if anyone has one.
No notes. Posting so the count is not one.
The tag pages are usually a better entry point than the categories for a first read. A tag cuts across categories, so following one shows you how the same subject is treated by the analytical people and the practical people at once.
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.
I am not the right person to answer the follow-up to this.
Adding a note of thanks rather than an opinion. I did not know most of that.
Asking as the newest person in the thread: is there a canonical order to read the documentation set in? I have been going alphabetically and that is clearly not it.
I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.