[development] Reviewing patches and making decisions

[Anselm]

Hello,

Having followed this thread for a while, I decided to do my bit, and start 
reviewing patches. I didn't get very far ; I stopped at the first patch.

Not because of the code - I could understand what the original code did, and 
what the patched code did - but because there are two decisions to be made :

1. In that case - and I guess this is not uncomon - the old behaviour might be 
a bug, but it might have been by design. I have no way of telling.

2. Changing the old behaviour to the new one could break old modules that 
implicitely relied on the old behaviour. Again, this is probably not uncomon. 
How do I weight the importance of the patch vs stability of old modules ?

So what do I do next ? I don't have a sufficient overview of that part of 
Drupal to make such decisions myself. Should I mark it as reviewed, and add 
as a note what the potential implications are ? Or is there another process 
to follow in such situations ?

Best,
Anselm