8

See here. This paragraph, first sentence:

Processes are central to legislation is made. Questions seeking to understand the rules and processes by which policy is made in various legislatures or ruling bodies (inside and outside of the United States!) are wholly on topic

It seems to me that the grammatical structure does not make sense. Possibly a word is missing. I can restore this sentence in several ways, for example:

  • Processes that are central to the way legislation is made. (This would be a noun phrase, still asking for a verb and an object.)
  • Processes central to legislation are made. (This phrase seems to require a preposition or an adverbial in order to be meaningful.)

Either way, it does not make sense to me. Seeing how this is the first page a person coming to the site will be checking out, I suggest we try to find a way to make it more clear.

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5

I think you are correct that the statement is missing a word. I suspect it should read "Processes are central to how legislation is made." I personally think this is more naturally phrased as "Policies are central to the making of legislation."

I think the point of that phrase is to signal that it is often difficult to talk about legislation meaningfully without talking about the processes by which it is made, so those processes must be on topic for a politics site.

Either way, this should be fixed as a matter of urgency, as it is essential that people understand not only what it on topic, but why it is on topic when they are contributing to the site.

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  • So how do we proceed? – Ignat Insarov Dec 19 '19 at 12:00
  • I don't know who can edit that page but I think diamond mods can? Given they check meta, one of them will likely see and correct this. If nobody has in say 48 hours or so, then otehr options may need to be explored (I don't know what they would be) but given meta posts automatically show up in the Agora chat room as well, I'd be shocked if it wasn't seen. We have good mods. – CoedRhyfelwr Dec 19 '19 at 12:03
  • What is Agora chat room? – Ignat Insarov Dec 19 '19 at 13:23
  • This. It's the main chat room for politics se. It's pretty dead most of the time but all meta questions automatically get shouted out in there. – CoedRhyfelwr Dec 19 '19 at 13:29
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    "If nobody has in say 48 hours or so, then otehr options may need to be explored (I don't know what they would be)" - Any of us could flag the question or this answer for the attention of a moderator if the omission in the on-topic page is not corrected within some reasonable timeframe (days not hours) – RedGrittyBrick Dec 19 '19 at 16:49
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    @CoedRhyfelwr Updated the help article to match your phrasing. – yannis♦ Dec 19 '19 at 19:41

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