Removing version numbers simply exposed how HTML evolves explicitly, browser vendors will never be forced to implement a particular web standard, they all have their own agenda and goals, while that may bring problems, this fuzzy concencus is the reason web standards are as ubiquitous as they are, and still evolving at a huge pace.
Putting a version number on a specification and dictating that all vendors must implement it by X date (or what?) is just confusing developers about the chaotic way in which standards are built.
Very few developers are even aware that version numbers were removed so I don't think it's had any real effect on developer confusion. It's probably made it worse. This article complains about WebWorkers which was proposed in 2009 but with the way standards evolve it's hard to know what capabilities it has. Meanwhile Firefox has a solid implementation of CSS calc() but not WebWorkers (which I believe they came up with).
In my experience it has helped reduce confusion, I dont see how it could possibly make it worse, unless you count the confusion as developers begin to realise how the web evolves as 'worse', I dont.
As said, browser vendors are have no governing body that force them to implement exact specifications at exact times, I dont see how putting a version number on html and pretending that they do is anything but confusing.
Removing version numbers simply exposed how HTML evolves explicitly, browser vendors will never be forced to implement a particular web standard, they all have their own agenda and goals, while that may bring problems, this fuzzy concencus is the reason web standards are as ubiquitous as they are, and still evolving at a huge pace.
Putting a version number on a specification and dictating that all vendors must implement it by X date (or what?) is just confusing developers about the chaotic way in which standards are built.