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.
Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.
Muting is under-used here. A category you mute stops appearing in Latest for you, and you can unmute it in a second. Most long-term members read four or five categories and mute the rest.
I would rather post the uncertainty than round it away.
You do not need to introduce yourself before asking a question, and nobody will think worse of you for arriving with one. The introductions subcategory exists for people who want it, not as a gate.
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 call that likely rather than established.
Off-topic posts that do not belong here belong in the Lounge instead. You are not in trouble if a moderator moves your post — they are just routing it to the right place so people who want to read it can find it.
On balance I think that is right, and I would not bet much on it.
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.
Understood, and I withdraw the assumption I opened with.
Joining rather than answering. I have read the orientation set twice and the thing that finally made it click was realising the documentation pages are the destination and topics are how they get written.
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.
This is where my knowledge stops and I would rather mark the edge than blur it.
Same experience here, different supplier, so it is at least not unique to one of them.
Nothing here requires expertise. The experienced members here got that way by posting questions, not by knowing the answer before they showed up. If you know something useful, post it. If you do not, ask.
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 my reading. Someone else read the same page differently and was reasonable.
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.
I would want a second opinion before relying on that.
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.
Nobody is going to check your credentials and nobody is going to ask. What gets asked for is the basis of a claim, which is a different thing and applies equally to everyone.
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.
I keep a log of this specifically because memory is unreliable about it.
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.
Worth saying I have only my own numbers here, and n is small.
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.
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.
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.
Scoping that to what I have actually seen rather than what I have read.
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.
Adding it in case it saves somebody the afternoon it cost me.
Likes here mean "this helped", not "I agree". People like posts that argue against them, and that is deliberate.
Worth checking against a second source before it gets quoted onward.
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.
Somebody will have a better source than mine, and I hope they post it.
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.
It is worth stating the boring hypothesis before the interesting one.