I made the call about a year ago, and mentioned it in several of the dozens of mailing list and on-wiki posts made about the development of VisualEditor since then. Clearly my communication about it wasn't read, or wasn't understood, by the people who subsequently complained, but I wouldn't describe it as being "done silently".
Users respond to things that happen to them and especially at the point in time when they are negatively affected by something. Its unrealistic to expect users to respond to comments about a piece of software before they have to deal with it.
This thread has served it's purpose; to surface various arguments about whether the preference to disable VisualEditor should be hidden or not.
It's debatable if this thread was ever really about that.
-bawolff