Here's a rudimentary ScratchPad FAQ I've put together:

• Where can I find information on the scratch pads?

  Scratch pads were announced in this node, though this one discusses the basic idea.

• How can I find a certain monk's scratch pad?

  There are three ways I've found so far:

  1. Go to the scratch pad viewer and then submit the name of the monk in question.
  2. Go to the monk's home node and then check the value of the "User's Scratchpad" setting. If the scratch pad is public, a link is available. (The message "not public" is pretty self-explanatory.)
  3. Send yourself a private /msg containing a [pad://] link pointing to the monk in question.

  (Others?)

• How can I link to a certain monk's scratch pad in a node or in the Chatterbox?

  See #3 above. (Additional details can be found here.)

• How do I change my scratch pad?

  Go to your home node and then edit your user information. The scratch pad area is near the bottom of the page. Note that you have to check "Make my scratchpad public" for others to view it.

• How do I save the contents of my scratchpad?

  This is a bit vague as to intent, however, standard browsing techniques should work for most interactive needs. For example, you could copy the text to your Clipboard (or equivalent, if any), save the HTML as a text file, view the source, and so on.

  If you're looking for a Perl script for saving a user's scratch pad, consider the following one-liners:

  perl -MLWP::Simple -e "getprint 'http://perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id
  +=108949&user=tilly';"
  
  perl -MLWP::Simple -e "getstore( 'http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?no
  +de_id=108949&user=tilly', 'tilly.pad' );"
  [download]

  Crude? Perhaps, but lwpcook should offer several ways to improve upon them.

• Why can't I find information on this in the Site How To?

  Unfortunately, it takes a bit of time to update some of the older documents to reflect changes to the Monastery's features. In this case, you did the right thing by searching the archives for scratch pad.

Update: Now that What shortcuts can I use for linking to other information? has been updated, I changed the link accordingly.

Hope this helps...

--f