More explanation requested for warning about rawhide inheriting updates

[Eric Smith]

The "Join the package collection maintainers" page gives the warning:

> Be sure that you build for rawhide (master) branch before pushing 
> updates for any other branches! Otherwise, those updates will get 
> inherited into rawhide, which is almost certainly not what you want.

I've never really understood that, but it's never previously caused me 
any concern.  Since I am now in a situation where I want to push an 
update to a branch (f16) without pushing any change to rawhide, it has 
me worried.  Can someone please elaborate on how this "inheriting" 
updates into rawhide works, and what can be done to avoid it?  I suppose 
the meaning is probably crystal clear to everyone else who has read that 
warning, but apparently I'm being dense again.

Thanks!
Eric