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 Splitting an overlong document 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.
Post #30 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
On Splitting an overlong document: 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.
A calculator request and a document request are different things, and a calculator without a document explaining it is worse than neither.
The most useful requests here identify a specific confusion that keeps recurring rather than a subject that seems important.
It took me longer than it should have to see that.
Answering the question post #32 raises rather than the one it answers.
My experience of Splitting an overlong document 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.
That is a fair summary of where the discussion has got to.
Reading back through the Splitting an overlong document threads from last year, the same three questions come up every time and only one of them has ever been answered properly. That seems like a documentation gap rather than a knowledge gap.
Narrowing post #36, because the general version has more than one answer.
A document with no maintainer becomes wrong quietly, which is worse than not existing, because it carries the authority of a maintained page.
Two people can read the same figure differently here and both be reasonable.
Agreed, and I will stop repeating the version of this I had been repeating.
That is consistent with mine, for whatever one more account is worth.
This follows post #36 rather than contradicting it.
Requests for a document covering something the evidence does not support get declined, and the decline usually points at what could be written instead.
Coming back to post #42, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Second-hand on Splitting an overlong document, so weight it accordingly — someone whose method I trust told me this and I have not verified it myself.
Offering a way to settle Splitting an overlong document rather than another opinion about it. Two measurements, taken the same way, a fortnight apart. If the difference is within the noise, the question was not answerable at this precision.
On post #42 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Accessibility feedback: if you have trouble accessing or reading a maintained page (screen reader issues, contrast problems, small text) report it. Accessibility matters.
Documents that are mostly a worked example age better than documents that are mostly a summary, because the arithmetic does not change.
Reading it again, the caveat matters more than the finding.
Splitting an overlong document has a well-known answer and a correct answer, and the interesting work is establishing that they are the same. Nobody has done that here yet.
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