On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 2:11 AM Baldur Blöndal <baldurpet@gmail.com> wrote:
> encouraging the use of a standalone signature for type declarations where at least one parameter of the datatype does not have kind Type.

So Dict, Eq both get a sig but Fix and Either do not?

  type Dict :: Constraint -> Type
  type Eq   :: Type -> Constraint
  type Fix  :: (Type -> Type) -> Type

 That's not how I understand Richard's criteria.  Dict and Fix have non-Type parameters (Dict has a Constraint parameter, and Fix has a (Type -> Type) parameter.  On the other hand, Eq and Either have only Types as parameters.  This seems to match my intuition about when a kind signature might be helpful, as well as yours as far as I can tell from what you wrote.

That's not to say I am advocating any kind of rule.  As I'm not really involved in GHC development, I refrain from having any opinion.  I just think you may have misread Richard's suggestion.