Yes! Do an art page <when you feel comfortable>
I never thought about the mint think...that would probably work for humans too wouldn't it? I have some mint in the garden and if I don't have actual mints that would work!
We do have a support thread on the forums page that describes Pinging...the only ones that are difficult to ping are avatar users that have a space, like mine, and make sure there is a space after the end of the name (say if you put an exclamation mark after a name and you were pinging them, there has to be a space.