The five documentation pages worth reading before you post anything

The five documentation pages worth reading before you post anything — setting out what I have, and where I think it stops being reliable.

Trying to work out what would count as evidence on five documentation pages, before collecting any. This is the part I usually skip and it is the part that makes the rest useful.

If two explanations predict the same observation, observing it does not help. So: what observation would separate them?

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.

If you are not sure which subcategory a question belongs in, post it in the closest one. A moderator will move it, the move is logged, and nothing bad happens to you.

Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.

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 disagreement above is smaller than it looks once the terms are fixed.

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.