Open Question: Tent Question #3: Common Tent Setup and Maintenance Mistakes?

I've done a lot of scout camping in my younger days, was our pack's campmaster for 15+ years, and continue to do a lot of camping every year, sometimes with larger groups of family and friends. I often hear stories about how this or that model tent stinks, but upon listening further, I realize that the problem primarily is due to the user not setting-up the tent properly or not preparing/maintaining the tent properly.

So what are some of the tent setup and maintenance mistakes you've seen, and how do you prevent them from happening. For example:

Do "modern, high-quality" tents need to have their seams sealed before use? Exactly which seams need to be sealed? Do you apply sealant to the inside or outside? Do the seams need to be periodically resealed? What about tape?

With heavy-duty, sealed, waterproof, bathtub floor designs, is a ground sheet still a necessity, and if so, what kind? Is a larger ground sheet better than a short one?

Orienting your tent versus ground features, the sun and wind?

Protecting against water, animal and overhead dangers?

Anything else you've experienced.
So far some great answers. I like to make my own ground sheets as well, but they do need to be shorter than the floor of your tent, or tuck the excess under, to avoid rain from running down the tent walls, collecting on the ground sheet and then possibly pooling between it and the tent floor.

Making a nice layer of dried leaves, leaf duff, pine needles or dry grass not only protects the floor of the tent, it adds insulation and padding while crawling around on your knees. I don't trench; on hard ground I think it's too disruptive, and on loose or sandy ground it's generally unnecessary. But I will take advantage of existing trenches if aligned conveniently.

I'll admit the rolling vs. stuffing argument is new to me. I've seen a few fathers stuff their tents back in the bag, but always chalked it up to laziness. I've always been anally-retentive enough to try and roll my tent as neatly and compactly as possible. Maybe it's why my tents have lasted so long?

Haven't seen anything
... about cheap or incorrect type of stakes. Are they all the same?

Source:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110330121314AAaQsBk

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