A promotion I argued against, and why I lost posts 151–163

Confirming post #148 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

Check the links. Promotion frequently breaks a cross-reference because the source topic now points at the document rather than the reverse.

I had written a reply contradicting post #150 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

My understanding of promotion is a few years old and may have been superseded.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.

An observation about promotion that I cannot explain and am posting anyway, on the principle that unexplained observations are more useful public than private.

Nothing to add, except that this is the answer I would give if asked.

Post #152 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.

The most useful review comment names a sentence and says what is wrong with it. General approval and general concern are both hard to act on.

That distinction has done more work for me than anything else in this category.

Promotion: I would want to see the raw numbers rather than the summary before agreeing. Summaries lose exactly the information that would settle this.

Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.

Worth separating two things that post #155 runs together.

The reason promotion is hard to answer is that the obvious measurement and the relevant quantity are not the same thing, and substituting one for the other is silent.

Promotion looks different depending on whether you are reading the primary literature or the summaries of it, and the difference is not in our favour.

Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.

Not the whole picture, but the part of it I can speak to.

Small methodological point on promotion: repeating a measurement is cheap and resolves most of what is being argued about here at no cost to anyone.

Where I would push back on the promotion consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.

The most useful review comment names a sentence and says what is wrong with it. General approval and general concern are both hard to act on.