Does anybody care any more?

This feature is broken and nobody has responded. What is the point of this community? 

BTW this is broken in SQL as well.

Let's say I am using a test widget with value set to '1','2' and param name my_param

In a SQL cell, doing SELECT :my_param, ${my_param} has this result:

'1','2'                 '1'         '2'
'1','2'                  1          2 

Basically completely different behaviour. How can you deprecate something without providing the same functionality?