Reading order for a first week here, and what to skip until later — what changed since

On the opening post — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.

There is no stupid-questions rule and no penalty for asking badly. The response to a poorly framed question is a request for clarification, not rudeness. That is a deliberately cultivated norm here.

Picking up post #25: that is the part I would want checked first.

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.

Coming back to post #34, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.

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.

For anyone arriving from a search: the marked solution above is the direct answer, and the replies underneath it add the caveats that make it safe to use.

post #50 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.

The FAQ link in the sidebar is maintained and worth ten hours of forum browsing. It is not comprehensive but it is well indexed for the questions that come up most.

The compound and evidence pages are updated regularly and they are worth reading when you are new. They answer the meta questions like "do we have data on this" and "what do the trials actually show" before you ask them.

Your introduction is well framed. You have given enough context that people can actually answer. That is rarer than it sounds and it matters more than it sounds.

Two things before anyone answers the substance.

First, the context in the first post is clear and specific. Second, the question is framed so that an answer can actually address it. Both are the norm here and both matter more than they sound.

post #83 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.

Marked solutions are the site's way of saying that someone asked a good question and someone else gave an answer that actually worked. It is not a competition and it does not appear on your record — it is just how the site learns which topics stay useful six months later.