Second question: what is Community Health anyway?

Good point. Let's recap what the community health task force is trying to achieve. You're right that community health has to be seen as part of the bigger picture, and having a vibrant community doesn't matter if it's ineffective. But the foundation has asked us to look at why community growth has stabilized. Which means we have to look at why editors leave Wikipedia.

A "hazard" function for the top ten Wikipedias, showing the frequency at which users leave. The chance of leaving drops off quickly over the first 15 days of a user's activity.

The red line represents the restricted average number of days it takes for a user to reach the top 10% of Wikipedia's contributors. The blue line represents the time spent as a "core author". Although it usually takes around 200 days to reach the core, the time spent in the core ranges from 200 to 400 days.

Really, we're talking about two different groups. There are new users who try and "reject" Wikipedia, and there are core users who "burnout". New users and veterans. Rejects and burnouts. Some rejects and burnouts are totally inevitable. But a root assumption that guides this task force is that we can do something to reduce the number of rejects and burnouts, and increase the number of Wikipedians. If we don't accept that, we may as well pack up and go home. (Wait, we're already home.)

Re: Synthesizing together recommendations, I don't want to rule it out. But at this time, I don't think it's a good idea. Some of these recommendations have major shortcomings. (Or maybe they don't. But we need to discuss it.) When we get to the synthesis stage, I want to know that we're only putting together two strong ideas, rather than diluting a strong idea by combining it with a weak one.