MDL-70895 added functionality that makes the values specified for a specific question type "stick" so that when you add a new question of the same type, the values carry over (they are stored in a user preference) to subsequent "add question" forms.

The way this works is not obvious to a user. In the worst case it can cause problems (people may assume the default value does not change and have a bunch of questions with the wrong settings), and confusion in the best case where people would have no idea why the default grade is some number other than 1. If it goes unnoticed, that has a flow on effect when it gets to grading.

Additionally, the feature does not behave consistently. If you update an existing question's default mark, that does not set the preference and the value does not "stick". It only gets set when creating new questions.

This functionality should at least be configurable. An option somewhere to toggle on/off "sticky" question defaults would probably be best. I guess a potential place is admin/settings.php?section=qdefaultsetting