The term 'compensating developer' goes way back into the dim mists of photo lore.
The notion that diluting Rodinal, for instance, was the cause of gentler highlights and more shadow detail is an old one. Compensation was a foggy concept, and not always effective. Like today, some photographers got reliable and splendid results every day, while others swore up and down that it could never work.
The key was the amount of agitation. If the agitation was increased in proportion to the development time, no 'compensation' took place. When the magic happened is in the cases the development time increased but the relative amount of agitation decreased. Nobody really kept track of this stuff, the convention of massive agitation was hammered by the guardians of photo dogmatism, and we infidels just kept quiet about it and went about our business.
Adams was careful to point out the need to reduce agitation with his HC-110 technique, and the experts screamed. Today, many experts still claim compensation can take place, magically, with constant agitation and special developers... but reduced agitation is ineffective.
Much of the 'wisdom' of past years is based on flawed experimentation while the successes of workers like Steve Sherman is encouraging photographers to do the only really important thing a photographer can do: try it, and see what happens.
.
