@sangye
This has been a painful chat to read - mostly because there is such a flame feel around the whole thing. Interesting the story of how the various online "so called" communities are leaning one way or another.
Why would people get so irate unless they were either ignorant or felt they had a vest interest in one way or another.
The way i see the collaboration of the "core developers" is with both admiration and the sigh of experience working in software dev or any IT core team who try to be a "democracy". I agree that the role of the lead developer is to lead. When you don't lead someone will say "you suck as a leader" at some point. When you do they'll possibly say "i thought this was a democracy" when they don't get it their way. Alas this is the case and its also true that when you aren't at the center of it all you'll have these mischievous types who want it to break before it gets fixed for their own amusement but they rant and rave as if it is a reasonable position. Then there is the type of rant that is to accuse the "large blockists" of having no basis for their concern - which is so ignorant in itself since there are statistics, stress test results and so on to prove what someone who has a basic understanding of transactions being put into blocks can easily just comprehend - that eventually ... there will be lack of capacity.
So is it any wonder that a large amount of people are easily convinced that the capacity planning aspect is relevant. I am aware of the many other arguments and i am not trying to address them, just the fact that i feel the general ignorance of this whole scene if people can't imagine what it is like if "you were in charge" and you had to weigh up risk of doing nothing vs risk of not doing something (about blocksize).
I personally hope the size is just an upper limit and that people can still make small blocks until they need to tune up their node. As long as it works out like that i really think the arguments are politics and not really designer relevant. Design is to make the currency do what you want and not to exploit economic side effects of supply and demand (for transactions).
I agree that everything you have said has some truth to it. I even addressed that i kind of feel bad for him. But if you choose to become a leader, these are the burdens that you must take on. If you cannot handle them, then you are not meant to be a leader.
There is always going to be two sides to an argument, and the side that a leader doesn't choose is always going to be mad. Pro life vs choice, legalize pot vs not, gay rights vs no marriage equality, and now core vs XT.
However all that being said, if people are really that upset about the /r/bitcoin then they will find alternatives, just like if a majority of people choose XT, then bitcoin will move to XT.
I think the intensity of the debate and the reddit censorship is beginning to dwindle away as almost all heated arguments like this do. Now it is time for each of us (being those who run nodes) to make a decision about running core or XT. And honestly which ever one wins it doesnt really matter, because i would assume the entire Bitcoin community will continue on mining and using Bitcoin.
Then after this, we will wait until the next big debate that will show the same emotion as this one has. I really actually love how passionate people are getting about a big decision like this, it shows that no matter what side of the debate you are on, we all truly care about the success of bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
