Revisiting: Maintainer handover: how it works posts 31–58

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.

Marking my place. If it changes for me I will come back and say so.

Second-hand on Maintainer handover, so weight it accordingly — someone whose method I trust told me this and I have not verified it myself.

Offering a way to settle Maintainer handover rather than another opinion about it. Two measurements, taken the same way, a fortnight apart. If the difference is within the noise, the question was not answerable at this precision.

That matches how I use it. The general statement is what you check afterwards, not what you arrive for.

I have written this out at length because the short version keeps being misread.

Where the Maintainer handover discussion usually stalls is that nobody wants to say "I do not know" and everyone is willing to say "it varies". Those are the same sentence with different clothes on.

Taking post #50 at face value and following it one step further.

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.

Somebody will have a better source than mine, and I hope they post it.

Post #48 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.

An honest declaration on Maintainer handover: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.

Reading rather than answering, but this is the post I would point somebody at.

Trying to state the Maintainer handover position in a way that someone who disagrees would recognise as fair, because I do not think the version in this thread passes that test.

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.

I have said this before in a thread nobody could find, so it is worth repeating.

Worth separating two things that post #52 runs together.

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.

I have kept the units in throughout, for the obvious reason.

Small methodological point on Maintainer handover: repeating a measurement is cheap and resolves most of what is being argued about here at no cost to anyone.

Where I would push back on the Maintainer handover consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.