s9y/Serendipity — comment on commit 5548e6531ac5530191e990c7e79b6f7af74343cc
File:  line 0
By brockhaus:

Well it is useful in that case: The generic AntiSpam plugin was configured before, that i.e. email is required. Than it is set to disabled (and not deinstalled). This is in my testblog the case.

So the situation is: The database will report, that the email was configured as required, but the AntiSpam plugin ensuring this is disabled. So the template will show required for email what is wrong in that case (as the comment will be saved w/o an email).

Encapsulating in the named if statement will ensure, that this required fields will only go to the template, if the AntiSpam Plugin is up and running, too.