I've been a member of this list for quite some time, and I have to say that I've never seen that attitude expressed by the developers.
Fair enough, but perhaps your familiarity makes it difficult to see the problem. Not that I think there is a major one. I'm hopefully just trying to point out in a friendly way that sometimes reactions can be off-putting, even if totally unintentional. One of the dangers of the medium I suppose, eh?
I have seen patient explanations about why mediawiki is the way it is,
andhow that relates to the needs of the wikimedia foundation. I've seen helpful suggestions about how to meet user's needs.
As have I and I suppose now is as good a time as any to thank people on the list and the developers for all their work.
Sometimes those helpful suggestions include looking at alternatives
that might better meet the needs of, for example, corporate uses which have requirements for control which are antithetical to the goals of the organization which is footing the bill. Now that might be TAKEN as a suggestion that the folks with those requirement don't have a place on the list, but I don't think that that is the intent.
I don't either, not in all instances anyway. I think it may be easier for a relative newcomer to get some negative impressions though, especially in this recent line of discussion which got somewhat heated. I don't think that's really anyone's fault per se, just another casualty of communication by email perhaps.
In any case I'm not terribly interested in arguing about it either way. I think I have a grasp of what the list is about and what I can expect and not expect and I'm fine with that, always have been.