Comments in user timeline are returning Markdown

Question

In users/{id}/timeline, the detail field for comment events is formatted with Markdown and not HTML. Is it normal?

I saw in the question Comments are returning markdown that the API should return HTML comments and I wonder if it's always the case.

Here's a sample request: http://api.stackoverflow.com/1.1/users/22656/timeline

Output:

{
  "total": 35457,
  "page": 1,
  "pagesize": 30,
  "user_timelines": [
    {
      "user_id": 22656,
      "timeline_type": "comment",
      "post_id": 5057438,
      "post_type": "answer",
      "comment_id": 5663582,
      "action": "comment",
      "creation_date": 1298217147,
      "description": "[java] insertion sort - syntax question",
      "detail": "@aioobe: I've undone the downvote, but I think it's clearer to talk about what the *general* translation is... it's not like the compiler is *actually* going to put the decrement after the assignment."
    },
    ...
   ]
}

The detail property contains text like *general* or *actually*.

Answer 1

It is something of a historical accident that this method returns markdown, however it has become too dangerous to change it.

Consider it status-bydesign for 1.0 and 1.1.