On the subject in the title: Promotion criteria, and the one that stops most nominations — the long version Working notes rather than a conclusion.
A narrow question about Promotion criteria, deliberately narrow, because the broad version has been asked here four times and produced four long threads and no answer.
One question, stated units, stated method, and what I have already ruled out.
The opening post put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Second maintainers matter. A single maintainer is a single point of failure and every document here that went stale had one.
The most useful thing anyone has posted about Promotion criteria 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 Promotion criteria than reach a confident answer that nobody can support when asked.
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.
This has been discussed before and I could not find the thread, so, again.
Narrowing post #6, because the general version has more than one answer.
I think the Promotion criteria question is answerable and has not been answered, which is a more optimistic position than most of this thread.
Where the Promotion criteria reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
Distinguishing three things in the Promotion criteria discussion that keep getting used interchangeably: the observation, the proposed mechanism, and the recommendation that gets attached to both.
A promotion that is declined should leave the topic linked from wherever the question recurs, so the work is not lost.
Since Promotion criteria keeps coming up, it should probably be a maintained page rather than a recurring thread. I am happy to draft it if someone with more direct experience will review it.
I read post #11 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
What I can speak to on Promotion criteria is narrow, so I will keep it narrow rather than generalising from it. Beyond that boundary I do not know.
Post #11 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
The confident version of this sentence would be wrong, so here is the hedged one.
This follows post #14 rather than contradicting it.
I would call the community position on Promotion criteria likely rather than established, and I would be comfortable defending that hedge.
Coming back to post #16, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Interdependencies: if updating one page requires updating related pages, posting that connection here helps the maintainers see the scope of work.
That is what the documentation says. What happens in practice is usually close.
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.
Where I part company with post #16, and it is a narrow parting.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
Anyone who has looked at this more carefully, please correct the record.
Promotion criteria came up in a thread eighteen months ago and was answered well. I cannot find it, which is itself the problem, so here is the reconstruction.
Post #20 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
For anyone finding this later: the short answer on Promotion criteria is that it depends on one thing, and the rest of the thread is people identifying which thing.
Where I part company with post #22, and it is a narrow parting.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
That is clearer than the version I had in my head. Thank you.
Worth separating Promotion criteria as a question about the compound from Promotion criteria as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.
Adding the boring version of Promotion criteria, because the interesting version keeps getting posted and the boring one is usually right.
Check the ordinary explanations, in order, and stop when one of them accounts for what you are seeing. Most of the time the second one does.
I had written a reply contradicting post #26 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
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.
Narrowing post #27, because the general version has more than one answer.
Speaking only to Promotion criteria 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.
Everything in post #26 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.