Authority: if you think a page needs input from someone with specific expertise, suggesting that person helps the maintainer recruit contributors. Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.
Revisiting: Maintainer handover: how it works Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.
Maintainer handover keeps being re-asked here and I think that is because the answer is conditional and the conditions never travel with it.
Attempting to write the conditional version down properly. Corrections welcome and expected — I would like this to end up as a maintained page rather than a fifth thread.
Where I part company with the opening post, and it is a narrow parting.
Maintainer handover has a well-known answer and a correct answer, and the interesting work is establishing that they are the same. Nobody has done that here yet.
Careful with that. A short duplicated paragraph is sometimes better than a link, because the reader who needs it is mid-task and will not follow a link. The test is whether it can drift out of step.
Small point, but it is the one that usually catches people.
Authority: if you think a page needs input from someone with specific expertise, suggesting that person helps the maintainer recruit contributors.
Adding a source would improve this post and I do not have one to hand.
Post #5 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
An observation about Maintainer handover that I cannot explain and am posting anyway, on the principle that unexplained observations are more useful public than private.
Building on post #5 rather than restating it.
That matches how I use it. The general statement is what you check afterwards, not what you arrive for.
Not the answer, but possibly the question that gets there.
Worth separating two things that post #5 runs together.
The reason Maintainer handover 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.
Maintenance note. This document is due for review and the maintainer has asked for a second reader before the date rather than after it. If you use this page regularly, this is the moment your objection is cheapest to act on.
On reflection I would soften that slightly.
Picking up post #10: that is the part I would want checked first.
Where the Maintainer handover reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
On post #8 — agreed on the reasoning, with one qualification.
Volunteering for the review on this one. I use it monthly, I have a list of three things that have aged badly, and I am willing to be named as the second maintainer.
That matches what I was told, which is not the same as knowing it.
Evidence synthesis: if you think a page should cover recent evidence or a new development, suggesting specific content helps the maintainer prioritise updates.
This follows post #14 rather than contradicting it.
Review dates: each maintained page has a review date (the date by which it should be checked). If a page is past its review date, flagging it here alerts the maintainer.
That is where I would start, not where I would stop.
Thank you — that answers what I came here to find out.
Two claims get bundled together under Maintainer handover 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.
Coming back to post #17, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
I changed my mind about Maintainer handover after someone here asked me for the source and I could not produce one. That is worth saying out loud because it is the ordinary way it happens.
Careful with that. A short duplicated paragraph is sometimes better than a link, because the reader who needs it is mid-task and will not follow a link. The test is whether it can drift out of step.
A qualification I should have led with rather than closed on.
Post #17 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
That matches how I use it. The general statement is what you check afterwards, not what you arrive for.
Taking post #21 at face value and following it one step further.
Maintainer handover 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.
I read post #21 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Cross-referencing: if two pages should reference each other but do not, suggesting the cross-reference helps the maintainer see the connection.
This is the sort of thing that ought to be settled and apparently is not.
I keep a log for Maintainer handover specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
Adding the boring version of Maintainer handover, 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.
Careful with that. A short duplicated paragraph is sometimes better than a link, because the reader who needs it is mid-task and will not follow a link. The test is whether it can drift out of step.
Coming back to post #25, because the follow-up matters more than the original answer.
Where I have landed on Maintainer handover, having got it wrong once in public: the direction is clear, the magnitude is not, and anyone quoting a precise magnitude has borrowed it from somewhere that did not measure it.
Maintainer handovers: if a page's maintainer is inactive and needs a new one, discussing that here can facilitate the transition.