Modify one Custom Control and a dozen others get signed

We are having a problem where multiple developers are working on an xPages application. If one user modifies one custom control and saves it, several other controls get saved and time stamped with that developer’s signature even though he never opened or modified those other design elements. This is driving my boss nuts as he depends on these values to see who modified a design element and when. This behavior is making the $UpdatedBy useless and I can’t find a reason for it. The other design elements have nothing in common with the one that was edited. Does anyone know what would cause this behavior?

Subject: New Preference

There is a new preference in the designer client. Xpages → Recompile → Automatically recomple dependent xpages. Setting this to Manual recompile solved the issue.