Copied my post from the "help mine" thread, (and leaving bits out):
About helpig mine: The first thing, before discussion about selfish or polite, is awareness .
I started playing 11th of june (a week ago), and only started mining yesterday.
Helping someone mine is completely new to me, I learned of it in this thread, I didn't notice it ingame. Probably because I don't expect such a thing, I played many games where you just mine it all solo and whre other miners are competition, a threath so to say. It didn't quite cross my mind that you could help eachother.
I also heard dicussions about killing trees to get empty patches, which are needed for loam to build streets. People cure trees (=no empty patch) or plant trees(=no empty patch, loam).
I think replanting and curing is done by many (not all) out of ignorence about the need for empty patches, the effect it has on the world is not clear.
Therefor I think it would be a good idea to point this out more in the startquests. The startquests are mostly about how you get around solo (at least, that is what I remember of it). If the emphasize would be more about the effects your actions have on the world or others it would make me think more about my actions and their consequences, and what possible effect it could have. Make people more aware that there are more possible interactions with stuff then the actions you have currently available to you, or that there are often benefits if you do things together.