The earlier comments were so cynical I felt like I needed to offer another possibility: maybe they set out to do this in a more systematic way, then got so deep

The earlier comments were so cynical I felt like I needed to offer another possibility: maybe they set out to do this in a more systematic way, then got so deep in the weeds they realized it would take them forever to put it into more systematic form, but they didn’t want to just leave it sitting there sight unseen. So they acknowledge it’s sloppier than they would like it to be, but hey, at least it’s something. That’s not really self deprecating so much as just… being transparent?