One question about the transition rather than the policy: what happens to topics that are in flight when it takes effect? The announcement is clear about posts and silent about drafts.
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Meta · Announcements · continued
[2026 update] New subcategory: rationale and scope posts 121–150
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1 · go to the accepted answer.
The question underneath New subcategory is usually "how would I tell?" rather than "what is true?", and that one has a method attached to it.
Write down what you would expect to see under each hypothesis before you collect anything. If they predict the same observation, collecting it will not help.
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Post #120 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
On New subcategory: the maintained page in the documentation commons covers the general case with citations and a review date, which is more reliable than any reply here including this one.
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w.novak, post #96: Where I have landed on New subcategory, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it. Go to post
I read post #122 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Last note on this: announcements here get more replies than most topics and almost all of them are questions about scope. That is a hint about what an announcement should lead with.
Noting that the question and the thing people usually mean by it are different.
peak_purity, post #14: Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong. Go to post
Nobody has said the unglamorous part of New subcategory yet, so: most of the variation is explained by things that are boring to write about and easy to check.
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Post #124 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Housekeeping announcement. The documentation set has a new maintainer for two pages whose previous maintainer has stepped back after two years. Both pages have been reviewed at handover rather than assumed current.
Not a conclusion. A place to stand while looking for one.
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My experience of New subcategory contradicts the reply above. I am posting it as a data point rather than as a refutation, because one person's experience is exactly that.
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n.cabrera, post #102: Where I part company with post #100, and it is a narrow parting. The failure mode on New subcategory is boring rather than dramatic. It is almost always the step everyone assumes was done correctly because it is too simple to get wrong. Go to post
Picking up post #128: that is the part I would want checked first.
New subcategory is well covered in the tag pages, and the older discussions are better than the recent ones because they were argued out properly. Worth twenty minutes before adding to this one.
Thank you for announcing it in advance rather than after. The number of places that do the reverse is remarkable.
That is the shape of it. The detail is where I would expect to be corrected.
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I would keep New subcategory and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.
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Quietly grateful for the plain phrasing. Not every thread gets that.
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r.zielinski, post #13: Confirming post #11 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person. What would change my mind on New subcategory is a second dataset collected by someone with no stake in the first. Until then I hold it loosely and I would rather say so than pretend to more. Go to post
Taking post #132 at face value and following it one step further.
Two questions I would want answered before drawing anything from the New subcategory data above: how were the cases selected, and what happened to the ones that dropped out.
Everything in post #134 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Careful with the language on New subcategory. "Not detected" and "not present" are different findings and the first is a statement about the method.
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g.haaland, post #136: Scheduled maintenance: if the site is going offline for maintenance, advance notice will be posted here with the duration and scope. Go to post
The thing about New subcategory that took me longest to accept is that a plausible mechanism is not evidence of an effect. It is a reason to look, not a result.
The arithmetic in post #137 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Adding a small correction to the New subcategory summary above rather than a disagreement with it. The substance holds; one of the figures is out by a factor that matters.
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Useful. I had the fact and not the reason, which turns out to be the important half.
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On New subcategory, I would rather understate and be corrected upward than overstate and be quoted. That is a house style here and it is a good one.
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Narrowing post #142, because the general version has more than one answer.
Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong.
The strength of my opinion here exceeds the strength of my evidence.
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c.vasquez, post #41: Since New subcategory keeps coming up, it should probably be a maintained page rather than a recurring thread. I am happy to draft it if someone with more direct experience will review it. Go to post
Everything in post #140 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
The number people quote for New subcategory is a central estimate presented without its interval, and the interval is wide enough that the estimate is nearly uninformative on its own.
steady_state, post #73: This follows post #70 rather than contradicting it. One question about the transition rather than the policy: what happens to topics that are in flight when it takes effect? The announcement is clear about posts and silent about drafts. Go to post
This follows post #142 rather than contradicting it.
Filing a mild objection to the consensus on New subcategory. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit.
t.abubakar, post #26: I would call the community position on New subcategory likely rather than established, and I would be comfortable defending that hedge. Go to post
I read post #144 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
A definition problem is doing most of the work in this New subcategory discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small.
f.petrov, post #60: Scheduled maintenance: if the site is going offline for maintenance, advance notice will be posted here with the duration and scope. Adding it because I spent an afternoon working it out and nobody should have to twice. Go to post
Post #146 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong.