for the master project, we could set our config to ignore all the yml files in etc/ other than evergreen.yml, all the files in docs/ and distsrc/, and probably others.

Ignore documentation: https://github.com/evergreen-ci/evergreen/wiki/Project-Files#ignoring-changes-to-certain-files
Example: https://github.com/evergreen-ci/evergreen/blob/master/self-tests.yml#L3-L4