  In spite of the rich phenomenology of the polarization properties of radio
pulsars, the rotating vector model (RVM) created 50 years ago remains the best
method to determine the beam geometry of a pulsar. We apply the RVM to a sample
of 854 radio pulsars observed with the MeerKAT telescope in order to draw
conclusions about the population of pulsars as a whole. The main results are
that (i) the geometrical interpretation of the position angle traverse is valid
in the majority of the population, (ii) the pulsars for which the RVM fails
tend to have a high fraction of circular polarization compared to linear
polarization, (iii) emission heights obtained through both geometrical and
relativistic methods show that the majority of pulsars must have emission
heights less than 1000~km independent of spin period, (iv) orthogonal mode
jumps are seen in the position angle traverse in about one third of the
population. All these results are weakly dependent on the pulsar spin-down
energy.
