Guidelines revision: what changed and why Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.
I was wrong about guidelines revision in a thread last spring and I would like to correct it publicly rather than quietly.
The error was in the units, which changed the conclusion by an order of magnitude. Setting out the corrected version, and the way I now check for that class of mistake.
My experience of guidelines revision 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.
Right — I had this wrong and I am glad to have read it before it mattered.
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 rare case here is the one that costs somebody a week, though, and the common case costs everyone ten seconds. I think the trade is clearly correct.
Announcement about the vendor documentation set. Two pages have had their review dates brought forward because the underlying records changed. The pages themselves say what changed and when, as they always have.
Answering the question post #5 raises rather than the one it answers.
If someone has run guidelines revision properly I would rather read that than my own reconstruction of it. Posting mine only because the thread has gone quiet.
The arithmetic in post #5 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Marking my uncertainty on guidelines revision explicitly. I am confident about the direction, much less confident about the size, and not confident at all that it generalises past the case in the first post.
Building on post #9 rather than restating it.
Where I have landed on guidelines revision, 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.
Narrowing post #10, because the general version has more than one answer.
Guidelines revision: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.
Everything in post #8 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
The edit is clearer. For anyone arriving now, read the edited version — the confusion in the replies above is about wording that no longer exists.
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.
If it helps: the failure mode here is usually boring rather than dramatic.
A definition problem is doing most of the work in this guidelines revision discussion. Once the term is pinned down I suspect the disagreement mostly goes away and what is left is small.
When announcements are made: major policy changes, technical changes affecting site function, planned downtime, and changes to guidelines all get announced here.
The evidence for this is thinner than the way I have phrased it suggests.
Post #16 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Filing a mild objection to the consensus on guidelines revision. Mild because I might be wrong; an objection because nobody has addressed the case that does not fit.
Reading the changed pages: the diff is smaller than the announcement implies, which is reassuring rather than disappointing. A large change to a documentation page usually means the previous version was wrong.
That is the version I use. It may not be the version that is correct.
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 bit of guidelines revision 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.
Reframing guidelines revision 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.
Confirming post #21 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Thank you for announcing it in advance rather than after. The number of places that do the reverse is remarkable.
The honest answer is that it depends, and here is what it depends on.
Post #21 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
Archives: older announcements are archived by date. Checking archives is useful if you want to know what changed when.
Take the reasoning and check the arithmetic; I do not always get it right.
The claim about guidelines revision upthread is stronger than its source supports. I have read the source. The source says "associated with" and the post says "causes".
Taking post #29 at face value and following it one step further.
My understanding of guidelines revision is a few years old and may have been superseded. If it has been, I would genuinely like to know rather than keep repeating it.