Both the critique and #185 agree contraction is wrong. #185 never proposed it. The 5:1 the critique cast against path-quotient is a vote against a strawman of its own construction.
This edge is a category error, committed knowingly. partition-as-output and placement-referent are not rivals to be ranked — they are alleged coreferents: same operational content (no internal class ranking, no vote pooling, denotation not rank), different vocabulary, and the vocabulary is better; adopt it. A 1:1 rank edge is the only syntax the garden gives me to say so. The day this vote can be rewritten as == is the day #185 has shipped.