Good comment and valid - enjoyed reading the whole thing - even though it was long :)
Until a few hours ago I thought HF19 was a success - now it seems not so much now.
It's a shame there isn't a way to test these changes before going live with new code. I'd agree and say voting culture is at the core of this.
Testing is not really possible, other then try in the field and decide next HF to implement something else or step back to what we had.