The difference is that our system will allow anyone to initiate the process, anyone to vote according to their stake in the network and have the data available before any development effort is spent on a proposal.
I believe this is a net boon for the network, and hence there is nothing to 'walk back'.
What I believe strongly should be walked back is the discussion about taxing or stopping digging, and especially the perceived (and in some cases quite explicit) support the idea has received from the de facto leaders of the community. It was a horrible mistake to put the very core of the design of the coin on the table in response to market fluctuations, and that is most certainly what happened. It makes the coin
and the community and leadership look weak and fragile, not to mention the horrible precedent of even talking about going after coins that for two years have been advertised as something people "already own".
The on-chain petition system is a mixed bag, we could argue positives and negatives in the abstract, and you can claim it has nothing to do with digging or The Digger, and how you discussed it with xploited long ago, but the recent history has now (though perhaps somewhat unintentionally and maybe even unfairly) tainted it as part of the Great 2015 Digger Panic.
These are my options on the merits of the idea (especially on pushing it out now on at apparently accelerated pace), but they are also my opinions on what has impaired the market sentiment and caused a 90% price decline rather than something closer to the 40% decrease that the numerical size of the new supply would imply.