I have also added a comment about this to the Tag API overhaul ticket MDL-31090 As for @access private, this is different from private methods: <a href="http://manual.phpdoc.org/HTMLSmartyConverter/HandS/phpDocumentor/tutorial_tags.access.pkg.html">http://manual.phpdoc.org/HTMLSmartyConverter/HandS/phpDocumentor/tutorial_tags.access.pkg.html</a> There was a conversation at the time about the use of @access private on functions such as these, however unfortunately it was not documented in the coding style