What is the Welcome Mat

The Welcome Mat is designed to ensure New H2G2 Researchers receive
at least one personal 'Official ACE Welcome' to H2G2, for the
usual ACE-y reasons:


To make them feel welcome; provide them with some tips and links;
and/or to help them with any questions or problems

How to use the Welcome Mat

First, take a look at the conversation posting for the Welcome
Mat to find a section that has not been checked.

If you are the first ACE to access the Welcome Mat,
there will be only one posting, placed there by the Welcome Mat
page author, for the purpose of starting the conversation thread.
Normally that would mean none of the newcomer sections have been
checked.

If other ACEs have posted before you, examine the Subject line
of the latest post in the thread to see which sections have been
checked.

As an example, imagine the current Welcome Mat has 11 sections.
The first section(s)* lists some Researchers who activated
their pages late, and its Heading reads: 'PAGES ACTIVATED LATE
(1)'

Example:

*(Note:
If there are more than 10 Researchers who activated their pages
late, there will be more than one Late Activated section)

Subsequent sections have Heading numbers, and they too
are composed of up to 10 Newcomers

Example:

In this example, two ACEs have already posted to the current
Welcome Mat's conversation thread

ACE #1 took the first two sections, indicating in the Subject
line after completing the 'Pages Activated Late section the following:

Then ACE #1 posts again, after completing the next, numbered
section, incrementing a 'dash' and the next Heading number to
the Subject line so it reads:

ACE #2 checked the next three sections, posting after the first
one:

then posting after the next one:

and then finally posting:

 which is the Subject line of the latest post to
the thread, until you post after completing the next section:

The idea is to increment the last number in the Subject
line, thus indicating that all the intervening sections have been checked

Sometimes an ACE takes a section out of sequence, just for fun,
or for numerological reasons,

They indicate this by using a plus sign in the Subject line, to
let other ACEs know the sections between that and the last one
completed in sequence are not yet checked. For example,

Would tell you sections 5 - 8 have not yet been checked

In this scenario, the Subject line in subsequent posts has '+
9' tacked to the end, until all the intervening sections are checked,
when it reverts to the 'dash' format,

If there are a lot of pages activated late, requiring two or
more 'Late' sections, you might see something like: Pages Activated
Late 1) , Pages Activated Late 2), and so on. Just treat extra late activated pages
as if they were numbered, with the addition of the word, 'Late' -- for example,

until the ordinary numbered Heading sections are reached, then
continue as described before:

and so on

Post only to the same thread, of course, and only after each
section has been checked, because your ISP or the h2g2 servers
may experience 'technical difficulties'
before you complete a section  Hey, it could happen

If all of the sections have been checked, the last posting's
Subject line reads something like,

- so you can go have a nice, cold

And remember -- it's always to welcome a
New Researcher more than once

For more helpful information, see So You Want to be a Good ACE

If you have any comments, or suggestions on improving this page, or how to improve the system for checking the Welcome Mat, please post them here..