The Emacs Carnival April 2026 theme of newbies/starter kits nudged me to think about how new users can learn what they need in order to get started. In particular, I wanted to think about these questions that newbies might have:

• Is it worth it?
• How do I start?
• Should I use a starter kit? How?
• I'm stuck, how can I get help?
• This is overwhelming. How do I make it more manageable?

I worked on some pages in the EmacsWiki:

• EmacsWiki: Emacs Newbie
  • I removed or deemphasized some links that might be confusing for newbies.
• EmacsWiki: Learning Emacs
  • I reorganized the items and added some more notes.
• EmacsWiki: Emacs Screencasts
  • I tweaked the beginner information section.
  • I added a section for starter kits.
• EmacsWiki: Starter Kits
  • I added "Things to know before you start" to help newbies who might not have Git installed or who might not know how to get to the command line. I also organized the starter kits by type.
• EmacsWiki: Keybinding Guide
  • Replaced the link with Mastering Emacs. I'd add https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/efaq/Binding-keys-to-commands.html, but it's not responding to me at the moment even though downforeveryoneorjustme says that it's up.

People often recommend Emacs News to people who want to learn more about what's going on in the Emacs community, so I added some notes to that one as well.

• I added an introduction to the Emacs News category page to direct new people to some tips for making the most of Emacs News
• I moved the e-mail subscription above the RSS feed, since people are more familiar with e-mail as a subscription mechanism.
• I added a tutorial for setting up newsticker within Emacs.
• I set up some shorter URLs (sachachua.com/emacs-news, sach.ac/emacs-news, yayemacs.com/news).

Just gotta find some newbies to test these ideas with… Email me! =)