They really don't understand data and logic, do they? {scratches head}

It's the weirdest sort of phenomena. I've seen it happen in other odd places - took an Access class years and years ago at work and I knew most of the people in it, they were all smart, competent, and could work easily on computers. In the course of the class, it became obvious that the people were divided almost equally half and half for who understood the different buckets that data could be put into and how those buckets could associate with each other, and those who didn't comprehend it at all. It's a mental shift to look at data separately from its normal assigned roles and the function it's supposed to have and to just see associations and then link all those associations mentally inside the mind.

Apparently none of the AO3 heads comprehend this. They're like a certain co-worker who is forever coming to me "hey, I've seen this done elsewhere, can we do that?" and me having to explain, again, that no, we can't. In their case, though, they have nobody they listen to to tell them, no, it can't. (They have people such as you telling them, but nobody they seem to want to listen to.)