RubyRed,
For smileys and other such, you type the word smile within square brackets []. (If I do that it will, of course, print a smiley.) There are other emoticons and you can find them under the FAQs, "Using Markup". To make things a different colour use name of colour between the square brackets where you want the colour to begin, and /name of colour where you want it to end. I can type an example with spaces to show you:
[ red ] RubyRed [ /red ] should result in RubyRed if you leave out the spaces.
YART stands for "Yet Another Rehashed Topic" and some people find it insulting to be accused of YARTing, but we haven't really come up with a better name, though we've tried. And re-hashing isn't always bad because there are always new people coming in here who may not have discussed something before.
And the unwritten law - well there is none, really - if there were one, it would be something like "Be nice to people, and try to stay away from potentially incendiary topics." But above all, "Be nice to people" is really The Rule.
