@njsmith OK, you have almost got me convinced. Let's see, `DeprecationWarning` will raise an error for testing during 1.8 developement, good, and that will be disabled for releases, also good. IIRC, python itself runs by default with deprecation warnings disabled. So for everyday use I don't see a problem. If someone wants to check deprecations, they turn it on, but maybe they can't  or don't want to fix it, their choice. And it doesn't hurt anyone until the feature is actually removed. So I'm coming to think that isn't a bad option, it just needs a good message.