Review: a draft on reconstitution arithmetic, with objections posts 91–120
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Check the arithmetic in every worked example by hand. A wrong worked example is worse than no example and survives longer.
The disagreement above is smaller than it looks once the terms are fixed.
Good question, well framed, and I would like to see it answered properly.
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.
The conclusion is tentative; the arithmetic underneath it is not.
I read post #96 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
The failure mode on draft on reconstitution arithmetic is boring rather than dramatic. It is almost always the step everyone assumes was done correctly because it is too simple to get wrong.
Fact-checking: if you see a factual claim in a maintained page that you have evidence contradicts, post the evidence here. The maintainer will review and correct if you are right.
I have kept the units in throughout, for the obvious reason.
Review date disputes: if a maintained page's review date is approaching and it has not been updated, post a note so the maintainers notice.
The literature is thinner on this than the confidence in the thread implies.
Ask what the page would look like if it were wrong. A document with no stated failure conditions is hard to review and harder to maintain.
Post #98 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
Worth separating draft on reconstitution arithmetic as a question about the compound from draft on reconstitution arithmetic as a question about the documentation. They get answered by different people and only one of them is answerable here.
Narrowing post #100, because the general version has more than one answer.
Where a review raises something the author disagrees with, recording the disagreement in the review thread is better than resolving it privately.
I am aware this is the third time this month I have made this point.
Taking post #104 at face value and following it one step further.
I would put moderate confidence on the mainstream reading of draft on reconstitution arithmetic and no more. That is not scepticism for its own sake; it is where the sourcing actually stops.
Post #102 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.
Reading it again, the caveat matters more than the finding.
Acknowledging rather than arguing. The reasoning holds as far as I can follow it.
Objections are genuinely wanted at this stage, because a bad promotion is much harder to undo than a bad reply.
Where the review finds the content is right but the framing overstates it, that is the most valuable catch available at this stage.
I had written a reply contradicting post #109 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Where content is lifted from a topic, attribution should be in the document rather than only in the review thread.
That holds under the stated conditions and I have stated them.
The most useful reply I ever got about draft on reconstitution arithmetic was a request to state my units. It sounds like pedantry and it has saved me twice.
Post #113 is right about the mechanism and I think understates the practical bit.
The four criteria are that the question recurs, that the content is correct and sourced or labelled as community practice, that somebody will be named as maintainer with a review date, and that no unresolved substantive objection stands.
I have changed my mind on this once already, so take it as current rather than settled.
The honest answer on draft on reconstitution arithmetic 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.
It is the sort of thing that seems obvious in retrospect and was not at the time.
Reviewing your own nomination is fine and is not sufficient. Somebody else has to read it for the process to mean anything.