The principle controls the probability of changes to a document introduced by changes to document it references.

If a document references documents that are more likely to change and therefore are less stable, there is a great chance that the information in this document also needs to be updated. If not, the reference to the other documents is probably not relevant and may be removed.

Note that dynamic navigation links are excepted from this principle, since they adapt automatically to changes. This is under the assumption that the keywords used to determine the inclusion of a link to the list is based on the content. Changes to the content will result in changes to the keywords if appropriate.