I'm concerned that 1.8.3's acceptance of non-backwards-compatible  
changes to YAML is setting a bad precedence for ruby release  
management. I don't think that point (read: bug-fix) releases should  
accept and release anything that would break compatibility with  
versions of the same major.minor value. Further, I don't think that  
backwards incompatibility should be introduced on minor revs without  
a minor rev in-between marking such a feature as deprecated.

If this is the general consensus, I'd like to see the format change  
in YAML be rolled back for 1.8.4 or for a soon-to-follow 1.8.5 to put  
1.8 back on track. If it is not the general consensus, I'd like to  
put this on the table for discussion.