> For me, it is an issue. But you probably already know that.
>(http://bugs.python.org/issue26988#msg273125) (That's "the other thread".)

Ah, thanks.  I had forgotten about that one.

For what it's worth, I largely agree with you there.

> Try to explain: how exactly is that different than wanting "file.close"
> to close the file, or "quit" to quit the REPL?

Enum is already full of magic:
- class is iterable
- class is indexable
- member attributes are instances of class
- members are all created when class is created
- etc.

Flag, especially, needs a way to specify "give me a working value" even when the user doesn't care what that value is (as your, um, interesting examples have shown ;).

Whatever we choose as the placeholder (since it has been decided that no placeholder is too magical) will still have magic involved, so I don't want parenthesis there disguising that.

I'd also be happy with _member_ instead of _auto_ -- maybe that makes even more sense.

> And I surely hope we're not going in that direction [dropping parens from function calls].

No, we're not.