It's someone else's fault, and everyone should know it

If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
--God, Futurama

Dilemma of the day: fix a problem myself quietly, or point it out to others?

Work has been quiet this week. Most people are out of the office, of course, but I'm not, so I'm getting a little done on the doomed project. Technically, my review was supposed to start two days ago. However, all the people who could officially tell me to get started are out, and it is not ready at all. I have a couple questions, other people have a couple questions for each other, and I'd need to do work to actually implement the changes requested by the "informal review" before my own review can "officially" start. So instead, I've been working on a known issue that's only sort of part of my review. It's nice to get ahead of things a little... but then, this part is such a pain and so time-consuming that I really wouldn't want to do it at the same time as everything else.

In the process, I've found a few errors that had escaped notice until now. One problem in particular mushroomed from a molehill into... well, a heap the size of a person or so. I can't possibly compare this problem to a mountain, especially not considering what project it's a part of. It's a total of less than half a page that needed to be added or revised. But I definitely thought that I had identified the whole problem only to realize there was more to it at least three times. "OK, if we say this, then we have to refer to it in this other section. Wait, there already is a reference, but it's to the previous version. Wait, do we even have the latest version?"

I'm 90 percent sure that I've figured out the true extent of that problem by now. The thing I still haven't decided is whether I should fix it quietly by myself or e-mail the person responsible for it and ask him what he really meant and what to do about it.

There are a few reasons that I should probably ask for help.
1. Conscientiousness. As I said, I'd estimate a 90 percent chance I have the problem figured out. That's a 10 percent chance I don't. If it turns out that I am wrong about this, then finding out later on and having to fix it then is more work than firing off an e-mail now.
2. Ass-covering. Document that I'm working on the project at a stage when there's little tangible sign of it. Point out how many problems are other peoples' fault or could have been prevented by them.
3. It's in one of the unhelpful guy's sections, so I'm extra inclined to give the problem back to him if I possibly can. From where I sit it looks like his carelessness has caused so much unnecessary work that I'd like to spread some of it back onto him. Make him clean up his own mess.

But the fact that it involves the unhelpful guy is a good reason not to point it out, because, of course, of the difficulty of getting useful information from him. Really, the smartest, most efficient thing to do would be to fix the problem myself, but the main appeal of pointing it out to other people would be to say "See what he did this time? See what I have to deal with?"