Posting this under the heading it deserves: Requesting a page: what makes a good request — what changed since Everything below is what sits behind that.
What changes if the standard account of Requesting a page is wrong? I ask because I have been treating it as settled and I noticed this week that I could not say why.
Working through the consequences rather than the evidence, since others here are better placed on the evidence.
The strongest case for a new document is a question that recurs and has a good answer buried in a reply. That is the promotion criterion as written.
Thank you for the correction. I would rather find out here than later.
Worth separating two things that post #2 runs together.
Requests for a page summarising a supplier are declined, because that is what the vendor documentation set is for and it has its own standards.
I would be glad to be shown a cleaner way of putting this.
Link the topics that prompted the request. The discussion is the evidence that the question recurs.
Authority and authorship: if you think a maintained page needs input from someone with specific expertise (a clinician, an analytical chemist) suggest who might contribute.
Picking up post #4: that is the part I would want checked first.
Suggesting content for a page: if you know a maintained page is missing something important, post a suggestion with specific content you think should be added.
Marking that as an opinion rather than a finding.
On post #6 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Say what would make the page wrong. A page whose failure conditions are stated is much easier to review honestly.
That is what the documentation says. What happens in practice is usually close.
Scope the request narrowly. A page about one thing gets written and stays current; a page about a field does not.
It is the kind of thing that is obvious once and never again.
I had written a reply contradicting post #6 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Scope creep: if you think a page is attempting too much and should be split into multiple pages, that is a reasonable suggestion.
Where I would look next, rather than where I would stop.
Review cadence should be part of the proposal. A page about a fast-moving area needs a shorter cycle and somebody willing to honour it.
Coming back to post #9, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
A page that would need to be rewritten every quarter is usually better as a topic with a good marked solution.
Anyone with a larger sample, please post it.
Name a willing maintainer in the request. Point three of the criteria stops more nominations than the other three combined.
Adding the measurement that post #13 says would settle it.
Where a request is for a translation or a regional version, the maintenance burden doubles and the proposal should say who carries it.
Noted, and I have changed what I was going to do on the strength of it.
Translation suggestions: if a maintained page should exist in another language, suggesting it here helps the maintainers prioritise multilingual work.
That is all the detail I have. Someone else will have more.
Answering the question post #18 raises rather than the one it answers.
A document with no maintainer becomes wrong quietly, which is worse than not existing, because it carries the authority of a maintained page.
Understood, and I withdraw the assumption I opened with.
Reading rather than contributing, but this is the most useful thread I have found on it.
Worth separating two things that post #19 runs together.
A calculator request and a document request are different things, and a calculator without a document explaining it is worse than neither.
Adding it because I spent an afternoon working it out and nobody should have to twice.
Post #22 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Accessibility feedback: if you have trouble accessing or reading a maintained page (screen reader issues, contrast problems, small text) report it. Accessibility matters.
Correct me on the arithmetic if it is wrong; I would rather know.
Request a new maintained page: if a question recurs, has a good marked solution, and contains a worked example, it is a candidate for promotion to a maintained documentation page. Post your nomination in this subcategory with a link to the topic.
Picking up post #22: that is the part I would want checked first.
The commonest reason a good request stalls is that nobody converted it into a draft. A rough draft attracts editors; a request does not.
I would not lead a decision with this, but I would not ignore it either.
Objections to a request belong in the open, and a request that survives an objection is a stronger page for it.
Flag a page that has drifted: if you notice a maintained page has information that is outdated (dates that have passed, regulatory changes, new evidence) post a flag so the maintainers see it.
Building on post #26 rather than restating it.
If a request is declined, the reasoning is written down, and it is worth reading because it usually describes a better version of the same idea.