I hate to say this, but I think STINC calls this fork a success because it was for them. It achieved what they cared about and everything that went wrong they really don't care about.

I kept being perplexed at how they could be so incompetent at protecting user experience during the upgrade. I mean, are these not professionals with some concept of Change Management procedures?

After numerous conversations it has become clear to me. They don't care about Steemit or users on Steemit, except how we help them prepare for the release of SMTs. That's the business they want to be in, not providing end user experiences themselves.

So yeah, this is how they roll. And this is how it's going to be. And they don't care how many newbies leave along the way. They just need the data and enough of us here to present proof of concept.

So those of us who stay with that understanding can stop being disappointed. I would appreciate witnesses doing what you describe as your intention above, and will give you a vote. But ultimately STINC is going to keep pressuring witnesses to rubberstamp their decisions because that's all they want you to do. They don't necessarily have the same priorities as we might wish they had.