A promotion I argued against, and why I lost posts 31–60
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
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.
I have three months of notes on promotion and the honest summary is that the trend is real and the week-to-week numbers are noise. I nearly drew the opposite conclusion from the first fortnight.
Something worth flagging about promotion: the strongest-sounding claims in this thread are the ones with no source attached, which is the usual pattern and not a coincidence.
Coming back to post #32, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
I have separated what I observed from what I concluded, which does not always happen.
Post #35 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Second-hand on promotion, so weight it accordingly — someone whose method I trust told me this and I have not verified it myself.
Objections are genuinely wanted at this stage, because a bad promotion is much harder to undo than a bad reply.
My position on promotion is current rather than settled. I have revised it once already and I expect to again, so treat it accordingly.
Summarising the promotion thread so far, since it is long and the answer is buried: the first reply has the method, the fourth has the correction to it, and the rest is people agreeing at length.
Taking post #40 at face value and following it one step further.
Promotion is a question about a distribution, not about a value, and treating it as a value is what produces the confident wrong answers.
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.
On balance I think that is right, and I would not bet much on it.
Adding a reference point for promotion. Mine is a single case, collected without controls, and I am posting the method alongside it so it can be discounted appropriately.
The failure mode on promotion is boring rather than dramatic. It is almost always the step everyone assumes was done correctly because it is too simple to get wrong.
This follows post #44 rather than contradicting it.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
If this contradicts something upthread, the upthread version may well be the better one.
Worth separating two things that post #46 runs together.
Check the links. Promotion frequently breaks a cross-reference because the source topic now points at the document rather than the reverse.
The literature is thinner on this than the confidence in the thread implies.
The honest answer on promotion 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.
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.
Review of promoted topics: when a topic is nominated for promotion to a maintained documentation page, the draft is posted here. Community review happens before promotion. Objections are welcome.
Worth checking against a second source before it gets quoted onward.
I had written a reply contradicting post #49 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
For anyone finding this later: the short answer on promotion is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.
Confirming post #53 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.
Promotion is one of those subjects where the general answer and the answer for a specific case diverge, and the thread will go in circles until someone says which one is being asked for.
Thank you — that answers what I came here to find out.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
I am describing what is, rather than arguing for what should be.
Post #57 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
Before the thread moves on from promotion — what is the sample size behind the claim? I am not being difficult; I have seen the same figure quoted from an n of four and from an n of four hundred.
Two claims get bundled together under promotion and they need separating. The descriptive one — this is what was observed — is usually well supported. The causal one — this is why — usually is not.
Almost every disagreement in threads like this one dissolves once you say which of the two you are making.