Apologies for the late response on this. As nodeify previously mentioned, the allocation scheme in dispute includes an indexer signaling to prior versions with the sole intent to extract high indexer rewards. Other indexers may think the signal is an honest interest in querying a prior version, but this is demonstrably not the case. It further becomes a net negative when the disputed indexer removes signal after others allocate to the subgraph (wastes indexer time and resources while adding confusion).
As has been pointed out in Dispute #3, there is precedent in slashing an indexer when behavior is found to be a net negative to the network for the goal of exploiting personal income.
As per the discussion you referenced, this was mostly agreed as unacceptable behavior. Which I was preparing disputes on until P2P brought it to the forum and the behavior was renounced by the discussed indexer.
A definition of optimal when describing ‘optimal behavior’ which does not include the health of the network and consumer success is misaligned with the network. If all indexers operated in this fashion it would lead to a degraded mainnet.
All in all, I believe there has been consensus that behavior like this is not acceptable and thus these allocations should be slashed. I also believe allowing this behavior discourages participants from actual optimal behavior of assisting the network in achieving it’s goals - optimizing server configuration to better serve consumer queries, helping consumers write queries, helping consumers migrate, building new subgraphs for consumers, facilitating consumers when their prod subgraph breaks etc.