Posting this under the heading it deserves: A promotion I argued against, and why I lost Everything below is what sits behind that.
Two things I would like separated before anyone answers on promotion, because they get bundled and then argued about as one thing.
The first is descriptive: what has actually been observed, by whom, and how. The second is causal: why. I am asking about the first only.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
Reframing promotion slightly, because I think the disagreement is about the question rather than the answer. If the question is "does it happen", yes. If it is "how often", nobody here knows.
Picking up post #4: that is the part I would want checked first.
The bit of promotion that nobody enjoys is that the answer changes depending on what you are trying to decide with it. Say what the decision is and the thread will converge.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
Two sentences on promotion and then I will stop, because the rest is speculation and the thread is better without mine.
What is documented is narrow. What is inferred from it is broad. The gap between them is where every argument here lives.
Practical experience of promotion, offered as one case with the conditions stated, not as a general finding. Conditions first, because they are what make it interpretable.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
Post #11 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Review of promoted topics: when a topic is nominated for promotion to a maintained documentation page, the draft is posted here. Community review happens before promotion. Objections are welcome.
Promotion was covered in the wiki last year and the page has a review date on it, which is a better starting point than my memory of a thread.
Filing a mild objection to the consensus on promotion. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
Objections are genuinely wanted at this stage, because a bad promotion is much harder to undo than a bad reply.
That is one dataset and I would not build a rule on it.
Picking up post #17: that is the part I would want checked first.
The thing about promotion 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.
That is a cleaner way of putting what I was circling around.
I read post #20 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Careful with the language on promotion. "Not detected" and "not present" are different findings and the first is a statement about the method.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
The step people skip is the one I have spelled out.
On promotion the community has more anecdote than the confidence in this thread implies, and I include my own contribution in that.
Post #22 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Adding a small correction to the promotion summary above rather than a disagreement with it. The substance holds; one of the figures is out by a factor that matters.
Posting my promotion numbers with the method attached so they can be discounted properly. Uncontrolled, unblinded, and collected by someone who wanted a particular answer.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
That is the honest state of it as of this week.