Yeah, I don't know why you'd think, having taken care to add stuff to .git/info/exclude that doesn't belong in any commit that will make its way upstream (but nonetheless might be—and probably is—important work, maybe even the product of some non-trivial effort), that what I'd want is for it to be wiped out.

And `rm ./.gitignore` will, predictably, leave the tree without a ./.gitignore (i.e., the desired state) whereas `git status --ignore`, uh, won't.