Yeah, that does seem to about sum it up... some of this I have "no opinion" on... I very rarely use "trending" for anything (as far as looking for content goes) because it may represent "popular" content, but not necessarily content I am interested in. So I tend to use tags more, to find stuff... hence I agree that the "Communities" feature will be great, whenever it is implemented.
As far as usage goes, I am now done with the "let's wait and see how this all works out" stage and this week will be back to simply creating content... which is my primary reason for even being here, in the first place.
On the whole, I'd say your analysis is pretty accurate... and it seems the outcome (in part) has been that there have been some "churning," in terms of who's become more active and who's become less active.
That's my take from reading this also. Some big pros and cons. The community takes time to adjust to any new reality. Just do what you like doing and don't worry about money or flags.
Yes, Communities is crucial. It's scheduled for Q3 2017, though best to be skeptical of that.
I agree, I think the experiment has run its course and given us most of the information we need. We can get back to normal. Or should I say, move on to the next piece of drama. However, things won't be the same anymore, there'll definitely be a noticeable aftermath to Abitgate, and slight shifts in the community's sentiment to stuff like downvotes.
Communities should not be rushed... and I'm assuming (perhaps falsely?) that these will serve to categorize content better?
Back in "another life" I was part of eBay's "user advisory group" for setting and creating new categories... and it was a VERY protracted affair of observation-suggesting-testing-observation-suggesting-testing before anything at all was actually implemented. I mention this because if there's one thing eBay is superior at, it's subdividing "content" into meaningful chunks, at multiple levels of granularity.
It'll be much like Reddit's sub-reddits from the looks of it. You can read about it on the 2017 Roadmap.