@Borror0 Or the opposite: I think he's claiming to be (and complaining about) receiving a notification for each comment I post, even when I don't '@' address him explicitly. If that's so it wasn't behaviour I expect from the platform.

Let me recheck his comments

hm... maybe

Still, consider merging all the information you put in comments into your answer. then, delete your comments. You're not replying to anyone, so it really belongs in your answer.

@Borror0 I'm thinking out loud, since no-one else discusses it with me. I think it's harmless. When I think of a revision/improvement that I want to try, then I do revise the answer. It's been a work in progress. Some of my comments are merely not-yet-constructive criticism, i.e. not part of the answer: a statement of the problem.

@Oddthinking As a reader I'd find it convenient to see all the positives (must/should) in one place ... and for everything to be positive instead of negative where possible ("must be polite" not "must not be rude") ... all the avoidably-negative (list of off-topic question) in another one separate place. To make "religion" invidivually linkable you could make a whole new question "What questions cannot be asked here?" but I think that's going too far.

It would be better to have +ves and -ves on one page, all about questions. Expecting people to read more than one page is too much.

So I suggest grouping all the -ves into a single answer on the page.

If you want to be able to link to something which forbids beliefs, I don't think it's too much to link to a single well-formatted answer which forbids a short list of topics (which includes beliefs as one).

Someone who needs to be told "what not" might benefit some from seeing the whole list anyway.

I agree with your suggestion/direction. I'm still mulling over the best way to achieve it.

I have just posted a meta-question which I think you, in particular, will find interesting.

Because you posted a question on basically the same subject a bit over a day ago.

If we were constructing an FAQ which was a big text file, I would nod completely with your grouping together ideas. The fact that the FAQ won't look like that is what is making me think.

@ChrisW, whoops, I just noticed it has been 45 minutes since you posted, and I haven't pinged you yet!

I believe that the expectation from the StackExchange crew is that FAQ-tagged meta posts will be one Q with one A. But we have created these single Q with multiple A proposed-FAQ questions. It makes it difficult to see how they should be dealt with.

Merge into one giant answer, and make official? Make several answers official? Where is the cut-off? Which ones have achieved consensus and which haven't?

I think I will be talking to the moderators about this over the next few weeks, and that's when I will be able to give you a straighter answer on how much we need to consolidate answers.

Oh, and that still leaves "How can someone who wants to point someone in the right direction, link to the appropriate spot in the FAQ, if it gets too big. Again, if it was being hand edited, I would sprinkle anchors that could be referenced with # markers, but I can't.

"avoidably-negative" => "unavoidably-negative"

"I think you, in particular, will find interesting" - yes but not very novel (I've used/read the platform for a while).

I think there may be another FAQ which you didn't mention: a page which is only displayed to new users? On some forums? Which summarises everything on one page? Part of creating an account? I read that once: someone mention it on meta-SO as a new feature which I wouldn't have seen. I don't know its URL. I remember a feeling of being impressed at the attempt to get everything on one page, while being friendly and informative.

Somewhere on meta there is/was a page which was an index of all the other FAQ pages/topics. "What is reputation?" and question like that.

This forum only needs two: What questions, and what answers. Possibly one but I don't think so (that's what the /faq page is for). Preferably no more than two. Two are permissible because there are two uses cases (or 2 kinds of reader): more than one page for each use case is excessive ("TL;DR").

The format of the "what questions?" page could be two subtopics ("must" and "must not"), or several "must", "should" "must", "must", "should", "may", and one "must not").

One of the rules of being a leader is that even a bad decision can be better than no decision at all.

"link to the appropriate spot in the FAQ, if it gets too big" - Maybe FAQ answers can be kept small, then - e.g. no more than about 6 list items. And uniformly important and easy, so that it's worth reading through and through.

My computer is on the fritz. :( I had to do my last answer on a laptop... Not happy. And can't really afford to replace my main desktop just yet...

@LarianLeQuella I use nothing but a laptop, at home; I plug a real monitor in into it, and use it as a keyboard: it's more ergonomic that way.