I don't have much of an opinion about the general question. Wrt emacs-compilation, I think maybe building-emacs would be a better term. It's slightly more general (can include platform, make, and build-script questions etc.), and it's generally the term used on [email protected]. Compilation is a big part of building, but it's not all of it.

Good point of view (some other answers here are also good) - I agree with all you say. Just editing to make something backward-compatible can be helpful, but it is not as helpful as telling users why, perhaps mentioning both possibilities (and any drawbacks/limitations).

+1. Plus, as such an edit might not be noticed by some people, a comment about the change can help. (And you do typically add such educational comments.)

@Gilles: OK. Thanks for the background. Not a big deal, but too bad, I guess (aka "tough").

@Gilles: I see. So this is done to benefit users, but so far the available existing-user response is negative. Interesting summary. ;-) Yes, I saw some similar reactions in English Language & Usage. Whatever happened to "poll the users"?

1. OK. Seems like the blue of defun doesn't show up well. 2. Guess we'll have to address problems introduced by the new design after it descends upon us. 3. Was such a new design actually requested by users, or is this just some top-down imposed "improvement"?

The first two questions are standard and no doubt useful. But I haven't, myself, seen any such issues arise on emacs.SE. I'm guessing that people here might have ideas about how the site could be improved, but I wonder about the moderation. Maybe our moderators could provide some info about what they actually do and have done. Not specifics (naming names), but some idea of the issues they've dealt with (and how). I can imagine simple actions like deletion of answers that aren't really answers, but how about some info about what other things our moderators have dealt with? That might help.

I don't really use the chat room here or anywhere on SE. But I tend to agree that the "cute" name *scratch* doesn't exactly advertise that it is the chat room for emacs.SE.

Maybe so. But why a package? Emacs itself should offer this out of the box, if it's helpful for Emacs users in general.

Ditto. Thanks for the shirt!