Hi all,
I don't know if this has been discussed in the past so sorry if I'm bringing up old news... I was just digging through the WP_Query class and on line 2436 of /wp-includes/query.php there is code that supports the showposts parameter.
The parameter isn't even mentioned in the docblock, and according to the codex has been officially replaced by posts_per_page since 2.1 - so, 7.5 years ago. http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Pagination_Parameters (see the notes for posts_per_page)
Is this a case of "it's not hurting anything to keep it, and will do more harm than good to remove it"? Simply a case of "forgotten code"? Would/could/should it be officially deprecated so it can be removed later?
Just curious what others thought, or if anyone had any insight into previous conversations about this.