Hi Dan, most of that advice was good, but I'll comment on one thing you said:
Lastly, once the patch is clean and you can send it correctly (test on yourself and compare with patches sent that get accepted), send it to the correct list for patches, which is wine-patches, not wine-devel.
It's fairly normal to invite comment on a patch on wine-devel before sending it to wine-patches. I think that's fine, especially as he's just starting out. --Juan