Bad idea to create new folders at the root level?

I have several clients who have been Mac user's since OS 8 and even earlier. When they transitioned to OS X they did not learn to use their local home folder properly and they continue to maintain a very cluttered folder structure at the root level of their hard drive. I believe one advantage they probably find is when sharing files the files are easy for other network users to find when they log on to each other's computers. But, I thought I read somewhere at one time that this was bad practice. Can anyone point me to a good article which explains the OS X file system that I can give these people to read? Or, am I worrying about nothing? I'm setting up an OS X Server for them so they can use Time Machine to backup - will the time machine backups contain all of these files and folders stored outside each user's folder?

Larry Jorgenson wrote:
I have several clients who have been Mac user's since OS 8 and even earlier. When they transitioned to OS X they did not learn to use their local home folder properly and they continue to maintain a very cluttered folder structure at the root level of their hard drive. I believe one advantage they probably find is when sharing files the files are easy for other network users to find when they log on to each other's computers. But, I thought I read somewhere at one time that this was bad practice. Can anyone point me to a good article which explains the OS X file system that I can give these people to read? Or, am I worrying about nothing? I'm setting up an OS X Server for them so they can use Time Machine to backup - will the time machine backups contain all of these files and folders stored outside each user's folder?
I can't answer the first part, but yes, Time Machine will back-up the entire system (other than some specific system files, caches, logs, trash, etc.), unless they're specifically excluded via TM > Options (I suspect you wanted a different answer -- sorry).

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