This is an early attempt by a Newbie to use GuideML. in a Guide Entry and it is not yet complete.

You may think that taking a look around, checking the House Rules, reading the Guide Lines and FAQ pages would be a good thing to do before leaving your home planet. This is just what I thought and still do believe it is a good thing to do.

What you must not do however is to make any attempt to point out to anyone/thing the error of their/its ways. This will lead to an immediate put down from some of the Oldies, in particular those who roamed the Galaxy before the BBC took an active interest in their activities. Some of these entities make combined efforts to defend their old way of life and will go so far as to advise you to do as they do not as the Guide Lines/FAQ say. Only time will tell how deep the old bad housekeeping habits are entrenched within h2g2. and whether or not these bad housekeeping habits create problems in the future.

My advice to Newbies would be to quietly stick to the Guide Lines and let the Oldies continue to do it their way.(Old habits die hard).
When you eventually become an Oldie you can then put the Newbies right..

You are advised not to interfere. - some of these old entities can be dangerous..Three of them were on my back for 2/3 weeks.. In fact two of them still foul my space from time to time. I think the other one must have been muterated.

In Conversations.

As a Newbie take extreme care in the activity known as Conversation Forums. This is where errors in reply button pressing are at their worst. This error can lead to grave misunderstandings. Enemies can be made and friendships can be broken.

The following paragragh is hidden deep in the h2g2 FAQ - Conversations Page.

"Every Posting you make - unless it's the first in a new Conversation (which you can start by clicking the 'New Conversation' button) - is sent as a reply to an existing Posting in the Conversation. Pick the Posting to which you want to reply and simply click on the 'Reply' button below that Posting."

The important sentence is in ITALICS

I set up this conversation as a trial ID Cards - What's the problem ? I learned a lot about h2g2 but it's a learning method not to be recommended for the faint hearted..

The Conversation ###### may be of interest to some Newbies who find themselves as frustrated as I was. Postings # to # serve to illustrate part of the problem. Other than the sender and the receiver I challenge anyone to try and connect this subject. This may be acceptable but to me a more appropriate destination for the posting could have been found. Another example can be found in #####

In GuideML

If you are a Newbie and have not become set in your ways then you should be aware of the specic Guide Lines in this area. You are pointed to GuideML Clinic which in turn points to Writing-GuideML.
What a Newbie needs to recognise is the fact that GuideML is not written in stone. In the furure changes could be made that would necessitate wrongly written code having to be rewritten in order to get the pages to work.
The pages to read in this connection are:- Approved GuideML and the Warning with regard to sticking with Upper Case Tags is found here

Learning Approved GuideML - Notes

Stick to Capital letters for Tags

It might be a good idea to put notes at the bottom of the page indicating where deviations from Approved GuideML occured.

Do not use the 'greater than' and 'less than'characters for anything other than to enclose Tags.

Use of Pictures in Approved GuideML is not yet finalised ??

It also seems that smileys are a no no

The distinction between Upper 'P' and lower case 'p' is not easily spotted when debugging code

How do I use GuidePost ?

Can Guide ML (Approved or otherwise ) be used Off Line ?