I think I agree with this change, but it goes directly against the directions for numpydoc, which says "Enclose variables in single backticks": https://numpydoc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/format.html#sections (the "parameters" item)

In fact, only a few of these backticks raises warnings. So this may be a bug of numpydoc. I'll try to fix numpydoc.

The problem here is that `size` raises a warning (after the change #17691 ). I think the cause is that the function numpy.size exists so numpydoc interprets `size` as a reference.

Now I'm trying to solve by fixing numpydoc: numpy/numpydoc#303

Sphinx should recognize the parameter references. Does the current form cause problems?

I think we need a consensus if the docstring recommendations need changing. @rgommers, @stefanv Thoughts?

I think we need a consensus if the docstring recommendations need changing

I would not make a change here. That would lead to a lot of churn for little benefit.

The trigger for this PR seems specific to size, and maybe a few other places where a warning is emitted. Just changing those (to * * or the double backticks) seems better.

@takanori-pskq do you have plans to update this PR?

FWIW I think this is something that needs to be fixed in numpydoc - numpy is not the only project that has this problem with the default role: +1 for closing

It looks like this is not the direction we want to go in, so I'll close. Feel free to create a new PR if you have other ideas, @takanori-pskq