How should a beginner go about annotating games?

To expand on the Topic title, as a low level player I usually wont be able to see as deeply into the game as a higher level player, so how should I annotate my own games? I don't want to arrive at the wrong conclusions or take bad notes. Additioncally can someone of my level even begin to comment on the games of higher ranked players? I ask these questions partially to further my own quest, but also so that maybe I can give back to a community that has been very awesome to me. 

Good question !

In for answers

I've never thought about this, but I'll brainstorm:

1: Analysis starts with recognizing which moves are blunders. It is helpful to take a little bit of time to learn how to avoid similar blunders in the future. At the very least, the first thing an analysis should do is figure out which moves, of you and your opponent's, are blunders.

2: Improvements. Wih or without a computer, the next step is to figure out what move should've been played instead of the blunder move. Even if the blunder move was dropping a piece "Not drop a piece" is not a specific enough answer. Actual variations should be provided.

3: The next step is using a computer to find missed opportunities, or if you wish, more analysis time by yourself. These are different from blunders. These moves are moves where you had a chance to improve your position in some significant way (such as winning an exchange, or even a pawn) and did not take it, instead playing a move that kept things equal. Unlike blunders, it usually takes a computer to find these moves. For step 3, I like to go into my stockfish settings and turn off "display variations." This means that stockfish simply displays an evaluation as I go through the game. What I am looking for is for the evaluation to be some number close to 0, then for my opponent to make a move that causes the evaluation to jump up in my favor, then for my move to make it jump back to around 0. This means I have missed an opportunity. I can now go to the position after my opponent's blunder and I have a puzzle for myself to solve. This is why I have the computer display only the evulation and not say what the best move is. I can offer choices to the computer and it will tell me if the move is good. Sometimes I will find alternate winning moves that are +1.5, or +2.5 for example but not the computer's first choice.

That will give you a complete tactical analysis of your game, which is all an amaeteur with an engine can really hope for. Engines are much less useful in giving strategic analysis (This pawn move was premature, this was not a good spot for the light squared bishop, you castled too early here etc.) and generally strategic or "positional" analysis has to be given by more experienced players after you have completed your tactical analysis. Public analysis on chess.com is hit/miss. Sometimes you will hit the jackpot and get titled players who explain what's going on and why the move was a positional mistake and teach you to avoid the mistake in the future. Other times you just get players which give you variations, sometimes with literally no explanation. Usually you just get "3: e5 was premature" with no explanation or way to avoid the mistake in the future. Thank you, thank you very much. However, that is why people pay out the money for a chess coach, since you can always count on good, personalized analysis beyond engine assisted tactical analysis.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/read-this-before-you-post

Per the above Read Me, you're supposed to post your thoughts, commentaries, and possible variations. I think of it as sort of like writing a police incident report: describe what happened, say what you know, and say what you don't know. Plus here you can ask questions along the way. Putting your plans often seems to be important to readers to help them understand *why* you played the moves you did, especially since a bad move may often seem senseless to many readers, so if you were following a plan that was faulty, making a comment explaining your plan would make it easy for readers to evaluate your plan, as well, which might be the foundation of problems.

For Game Showcase, personally I like to read comments like in "My 60 Memorable Games": comments players made during or after the game, strange ways that players moved their pieces, their apparent emotional reactions, anything interesting the audience was doing, the presence of time pressure, insights you have about the opening that might help others, etc., though for analysis such comments usually aren't very useful.

I look forward to your posted games.

When I was near beginner level, I read Silman's advice to annotate many master games (and my own games).

I found this very frustrating, because nearly all moves looked equally good. I had no way to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable candidate moves. (Silman wasn't wrong, but his advice was meant for more experienced and knowledgeable players.) 

So, IMO, what's useful to do with your own games is pick between 1 and 3 positions in the game where you were uncomfortable, unsure, losing etc and look for a better move than what you actually played.

After that, use an engine to point out your large errors, and also any errors in your analysis (the move(s) you thought would have been better). Choose the biggest lesson you want to take away from a game. Usually an error you don't want to make again. This could be something specific like an opening trap, or in general like be sure to check whether your move is safe by looking for ways your opponent might check you. Choosing one main lesson per game helps you focus on and improve a small collection of what are hopefully your biggest mistakes.

Also use an opening reference (database, FCO, MCO, etc) to look up the opening. Find who left book first, and explore the main line. You don't have to try to memorize it, but it's useful to just see what's normally played. After a while it sinks into your memory on its own.

IMO, FWIW, annotating games on your own isn't very useful until maybe 1600 rating.

Good points. I used to notate about three candidate moves at any point in my games against the computer where I really didn't know what to do, for my own future reference when I went over my game later, since learning some accurate heuristics that would help me decide between them would be very useful to me for self-improvement later on. And one of my first steps in analyzing my own games or the games of others is to check the moves against a database, since that is often all I really need, especially when the book move is a clever one I overlooked (I've been finding a lot of those lately as I study openings for my repertoire), or if the move I chose was not in the top three choices.

To analyze a game properly, you have to show everything you thought about in the game, even if it is wrong. If a move is good or bad, don't just mark it as good or bad--say why!

Explain your thought process. Even if your analysis is wrong, it helps to have you be critized so you can improve. 

I agree. I was talking about personal analysis, but I forgot that for public analysis, the very least you need is all of your thoughts during your game!