I do agree with pretty much all of this. I try to have people keep the stuff they've worked a lot on for a little later, though it's hard to get people to not publish stuff like that right away out of the sheer excitement.

The reading and commenting is absolutely a HUGE part for people to know about. So much so that it was a big chunk of Part 1 in this series. It's so easy to just jump to posting and then try to figure out why nobody sees, let alone votes, for their posts. :)