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4d55102
(Get the code!)
This is part of the behavior of NUnit, as designed.
A long time ago (around 2004 or so) NUnit simply ignored non-public methods marked with [Test]. The unfortunate result of this is that such tests never run but appear to have passed since no error message is shown. Clearly, when the user annotates a method with [Test], he is expressing the intention that the method should be treated as a test.
Faced with that problem, we decided to recognize _all_ methods with [Test] as tests, the ones with an acceptable signature are treated as valid, the rest as invalid. Currently, it's not true that "other NUnit runners" ignore such methods. Both the NUnit console runner and the Gui flag them as invalid methods, although it's easier to see with the Gui. In fact, the Gui now flags them as errors as soon as it loads the tests, before you even click run.
Long experience tells us that users don't like things that fail silently, so we try not to do it!
Charlie