if you're new to gather, here are some helpful suggestions

these are groups that you could join:

http://gatherinterests.gather.com

About HELP! GREAT ARTICLES to help u survive on Gather gathered by a sympathetic novice: The focus of this group is on accessing Gather information and finding your way on Gather. Includes directories and indexes

http://helpforum.gather.com/

About Gather Help Forum (member to member): This group is for Gather members to assist other members with their Gather questions or problems. Ask 'How do I?' questions, or just ask for assistance! Other helpful Gather members will come to the rescue!

i'm going to feature this article.  if anyone knows of other helpful gather groups, please post them to this thread.

the default flag for seeing posts is set to a standard like g-rated.  if you want to see posts that are intended for mature audiences, you have to change that flag to mature audience.  if your setting is set to block content intended for mature audiences, you won't even see the articles listed on a group that have been flagged as being for mature audiences.

What is Guarded Viewing?
Gather has a feature to allow members to either block content or allow content intended for mature audiences. In order to view this content, which may include nudity, explicit sexuality, graphic violence, or crude language, the member must be 18 years of age or older. This feature is located on the settings page under the My Gather section.

Why do you need my birth date to turn off Guarded Viewing?
In order to view this content, the member must be 18 years of age or older. This feature is located on the settings page.

What are connections?
Connections are the friends, family, and colleagues you've connected with on Gather, also known as My People. Invite as many people as you'd like to join, and you'll automatically be connected when they register. You can also search under the People tab to Find Members by their first name, last name, city, state, email, or username. If you're interested in making a connection with a current member, simply click the Connect button under the member's name and choose the appropriate connection type. The member will receive a connection request that he or she can accept or decline.

What is My People?
My People lists all of your Gather connections. Want updates on what they're publishing? Choose the desired notifications on your settings page; you'll receive an email whenever content or comments have been published or when new connections have been made by one of your connections.

these topics are on the help pages.  to get to them, click on help in the upper righthand corner.

about gatherpoints:

you get points for rating articles, commenting, connecting to other people, subscribing to a particular member so that you can see what they are publishing, joining groups, rating articles, inviting people to groups that you belong to, publishing articles yourself, sending gathermail and creating groups. you may also get points for other things too, but gather doesn't disclose their point awarding formula.  these gatherpoints can be cashed in for gift certificates, given away to charities, or cashed in for $ when you reach a certain level.  to find out what you can earn, look at "my gather" and click on the earnings.  you can click on see all to look at all of the gift certificates available.

all of us were new once and we are still discovering different features.  gather software requires a learning curve, but you will probably find that after a little while that you start catching on.

your namespace (your personal homepage) is formatted like this: my name is shamlet (username is troublemkr) so my namepage is found at shamlet.gather.com.  groupspaces are the home page of the group.  this group is at politicsforus.gather.com.

you can subscribe to a person's content, you can join a group.  you cannot join a person.  you can connect to a person but you cannot connect to a group.  lol, i'm mentioning this because i tried to do that for two weeks when i was first starting at gather.

if you publish an article, you can edit it afterward or delete it through edit.  when you edit, you can publish your article to additional groups or delete your article from a group.  you can delete comments but not edit them.

tags help people find articles that they might want to read.  so good tagging helps your article be read by people outside the group.

groups would appreciate it if you would reflect on the group's theme before you publish an article to them.  sometimes articles are removed because they don't relate to a group's theme.  it's nothing personal.  and occasionally people make mistakes when marking the groups for the articles.

please rate articles if you read them.  that way the author knows whether you like the content and both of you get points for that, i think.  you could like the fact that the article was published, you could like the viewpoint of the author.  just click on the 1-10 rating, with 1=poor and 10=excellent.  use whatever rating system you want.  i use 10=worthy of discussion whether i agree with the point of view or not.  i either rate an article 10 or not at all.  any rating system is just fine.  there is no contest for the best rating system - it is totally your rating system and you don't have to explain it or justify it.

if anyone knows of a gathersite that would help newbies, please add to this thread.