The topic list is dense — is that deliberate? posts 31–60

The honest answer on topic list is that it depends, and the useful part is the list of what it depends on. Four items, in rough order of how much they matter.

Most people get the first two right and then argue about the fourth.

I read the earlier replies on topic list twice before writing this, because I had assumed the opposite and wanted to be sure I was disagreeing with what was said rather than what I expected.

Adding the measurement that post #45 says would settle it.

Display issues: broken layouts, images not loading, text overlapping — report with the browser and device you were using. Display bugs are platform-specific.

I would put a moderate confidence on that and no more.

Post #46 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.

Checked the topic list claim against the primary source this morning. It survives, with a narrower scope than the version quoted here. Posting the narrower scope.

Feature request framed as feedback: the category list is long enough that a first-time reader cannot tell which four categories carry most of the traffic. A count next to each would fix that without changing anything structural.

Coming back to post #46, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.

Topic list is a question about a distribution, not about a value, and treating it as a value is what produces the confident wrong answers.

I would put moderate confidence on the mainstream reading of topic list and no more. That is not scepticism for its own sake; it is where the sourcing actually stops.

Post #49 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.

Not a bug, but worth saying: the moderation log is paginated at twenty-five entries and there is no way to filter it by rule. Being able to read every R6 action in sequence would be genuinely instructive.

Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.

Answering the topic list question as asked, then the question I think is meant. As asked: yes, with the qualification below. As meant: it depends on how the first measurement was taken.

That would also be the fastest way for a new member to understand what R6 actually catches, which is narrower than people assume from the text.

I had written a reply contradicting post #53 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

Worth separating topic list as a question about the compound from topic list as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.

Confirming post #53 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

On topic list: 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.

Reporting a real defect: on a long topic the jump-to-post link scrolls to the right post but the highlight does not fire on the first load. Second load is fine. Reproducible on my end, twice.

Nobody has said the unglamorous part of topic list yet, so: most of the variation is explained by things that are boring to write about and easy to check.

Two things can be true about topic list at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.

The counter-argument is that a review date on a topic implies a maintenance promise nobody has made. A document carries one because somebody signed up to it.