A fair number of questions here:
1. After finding out sentient corpses on the refuse pile spooks both sensitive dwarves and caravans, I tried to set up one sentient refuse pile, and one non sentient one, and failed. It's a lot of work to set up, since there are so many sentient creatures and a lot of body part sections as well, and in the end it didn't work anyway, because the buggers hauled the perfectly butcherable forgotten beast corpse to the sentient pile, rather than the closer non sentient pile (settings reversed, i.e. everything allowed except sentients). The sentient pile was newer and to the NW of the original one, though. My conclusion is that you have to Dump sentient corpses and body parts manually, for further manual disposal. Also, I think you need to Dump all the corpses from the goblin invasion FIRST and then unforbid their equipment. Otherwise sensitive citizens with a preference for bloody troll fur loincloths over high quality locally produced clothing will go to the battlefield and get horrified again and again (has happend to me). Is there a way to get the desired refuse separation to work with refuse piles?
2. The wiki claims tattered clothing, damaged furniture, etc, should go to the refuse pile. However, my dwarves carry tattered clothing to ordinary clothes piles (in as far as they carry the stuff at all), but I've never seen it in the refuse pile. Is there any way to designate unwanted stuff as refuse?
3. I've tried to set up tattered clothing stockpiles for trade collection, but the only separator I find is based on value, and high quality worn (and discarded) clothing is still worth more than basic quality factory new stuff. Is there a way to collect worn stuff? I have so far periodically scoured the map and Dump marked all the dropped stuff (tedious and unfun), and have set up the Garbage pile 1 tile from the trade depot, and have also experimented with a lowest quality clothes stockpile with bins just beside it, but as indicated, higher quality discarded stuff still gets sent to the new stuff pile. Obviously, this usage would seriously conflict with Dumping for corpse disposal.
4. I have a serious over production of booze and food. Is there some kind of info on how many farm tiles you need to fulfil your booze, food, and clothing needs?
5. It seems the dorfs clothing needs are infinite. How much do they need/want?
6. I must be doing something wrong in my clothing production mix when dwarves prefer blood soaked low quality goblin stuff before local high quality production. I thought their need would be covered by producing Tunics, Cloaks, Trousers, Hoods, Gloves, Socks and Shoes, but obviously something is missing. What I'm looking for is a repeat production mix (max 10 items, since that's the queue length) that will keep them satisfied.
7. Given the clothing demands, I can't slaughter enough animals to get the leather for clothes production (to complement pig tails), but that results in an over production of meat. Is there a way to get rid of unwanted meat other than just let it rot and THEN be discarded? I try to use up as much as possible by production of Lavish Meals.
8. I can't seem to find a working labor mix. I've had several instances of unexpected (and unwanted) egg hatching because the dorfs just couldn't be bothered with collecting them in the very long time it takes before they hatch. I also have lots of instances of crops withering in the fields due to lack of harvesting (90% of the harvesting seems to be done by children, except when there is a time critical task, such as a medical emergency or tanning of raw hides, when harvesting suddenly becomes a top adult priority). Dropped clothes are rarely collected, workshops get cluttered despite (infinite) storage space in quantum stockpiles. I assume it comes down to getting hauling set up properly, but I can't seem to find a working mix. Dwarves with proper labors to do cannot be tasked with hauling, since they then never get around doing their job, so I try to switch hauling on and off on these dwarves (need a lever set up? Disable hauling on a mechanic (or all of them, then see who got ready first), wait until the job is done (the mech's idle), enable hauling again). However, hauling is a bunch of categories, and my experimentations haven't resulted in any kind of balance. Either everyone is flat out hauling stuff (or performing proper jobs), but some jobs never gets taken care of, or some haulers sit idle much of the time (I've mostly given up trying to combine farming with anything else, so farmers plant, pull occasional levers, and the TOP dwarven priority: destroy stuff, do nothing, and STILL fail to harvest). Any ideas on how to get a healty hauling mix?
9. What hauling category does raw gems fall into? Stone or Item? The reason for the question is that I've tried to come up with hauling categories divided into "near" and "far" jobs, where wood and stone collection are potentially remote ones, where the worker may take quite some time getting the job done. I don't want to task dwarves with "far" jobs if they may be needed for a proper job (like a doctor).