I configure my org-capture templates set to insert items at the end of a
capture file: i.e., with a simple file target - (file "~/org/inbox.org")
- and no target headline. In the past, org capture would always insert
these as top level headings, regardless of existing headings in the
target file. Recently, org-capture has begun to nest these entries
according to context. This is undesirable, as it has caused many
important capture items to be buried under unrelated headings.

I did a git bisect and found the problematic commit from June 2, 2017:

57d0a7453d0386f3f1425fc5319b2f42fca16e42

As far as I can tell, that commit took out the line in
org-capture-place-entry that sets level to 1 when there is no target
entry. The attached patch makes a minor change to fix the issue.

Best,
Matt