I don't understand what the worrying part is. The original poster of the SO question was asking a question. They didn't know if it was a bug or them misundersta

I don't understand what the worrying part is. The original poster of the SO question was asking a question. They didn't know if it was a bug or them misunderstanding the intended functionality. The subject literally ends with, "is bug or feature?" The people who answered it explain that it's a bug, thereby answering the question, and expand as to why they think it's a bug. One person figured out a patch. The bug was already filed and fixed nearly a month ago but doesn't seem to have been released yet to the current versions of Safari. If there's already a bug filed and marked fixed but you can see that it isn't fixed yet for the people using Safari, and it matters to you, why would sharing it be worrisome? You could argue that the person who answered with a patch didn't know the bug was already filed with Apple, and so they should have sought out how to file it before sharing it. But I think it ignores how intimidating it can be for someone to file an official bug report with a hugely popular piece of software maintained by one of the largest companies in the world. It's even more intimidating if you've done it before and the report you filed ended up being wrong (many maintainers are not very considerate when responding to mistaken bug reports, which can wreak havoc on a developer's self esteem). Meanwhile you have platforms like StackOverflow and Hacker News which vastly lower the bar in terms of needing to be right, since they operate more as conversation facilitators than official registers of legitimate bugs. It's much easier to share what you think you've found with a group of your peers, than it is to go on record telling a group of experts that they've made a mistake in the thing that they're experts on. I don't know if the outcome is worrisome or not, but it definitely seems expected to me... even inevitable. It's the same reason you talk with your friends about how annoyed you are with potholes not being filled before you take your concerns to a town hall meeting. It's a way to refine your thoughts in a low-stakes settings with peers before formalizing an issue to run up the ladder.