Guidelines revision: what changed and why posts 31–60
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Post #31 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
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.
Reading it again, the caveat matters more than the finding.
Coming back to post #30, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
What would change my mind on guidelines revision 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.
On guidelines revision, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.
If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.
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Post #34 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
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.
Scoping that to what I have actually seen rather than what I have read.
Confirming post #35 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
The most useful thing anyone has posted about guidelines revision in this category was a table of what had been measured and by whom. That is what I would want again.
I would rather this thread reach "we do not know" about guidelines revision than reach a confident answer that nobody can support when asked.
Where the guidelines revision reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
Answering the question post #40 raises rather than the one it answers.
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.
It is worth checking rather than assuming, which costs nothing.
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.
Happy to be corrected if someone holds better data than mine.
Understood. Thank you for being specific about the limits of it.
Adding the measurement that post #46 says would settle it.
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.
Second-hand, so weight it accordingly.
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I had written a reply contradicting post #48 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Speaking only to guidelines revision as I have actually seen it, rather than as it is usually described: the effect is real, it is smaller than the thread suggests, and the variance between people is larger than the effect.
Confirming post #48 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
I changed my mind about guidelines revision after someone here asked me for the source and I could not produce one. That is worth saying out loud because it is the ordinary way it happens.
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.
Agreed on guidelines revision, with one qualification that I think matters. The reasoning holds for the case as described. Change the starting assumption and it does not, and the starting assumption is the part nobody states.
Building on post #50 rather than restating it.
When announcements are made: major policy changes, technical changes affecting site function, planned downtime, and changes to guidelines all get announced here.
The claim is narrower than it sounds, and deliberately so.
Post #52 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
A methods point on guidelines revision rather than a substantive one: if the comparison is not like for like, the difference you are measuring is the difference in method.
Adding a data point of agreement rather than a data point.
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Post #56 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
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.
A guess, clearly labelled as one.
Post #57 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Practical answer on guidelines revision, since the theoretical one is upthread: do the simplest check first, write down the result, and only then decide whether the complicated explanation is needed. It usually is not.
I read post #56 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Genuine question rather than a rhetorical one: has anyone here actually observed guidelines revision, as opposed to read about it? The thread is long and I cannot tell.