Nah I get what you mean. I was a normal blogger here before I got into witnessing. Originally I figured that everything is some scam with witnesses and Steemit Inc colluding or being one and the same or not doing anything. It turned out not to be true. Took me a long time to really get that the witnesses are all unique individuals and that they really do give a shit about the chain and steem and about the users. The witness slack is basically a whole bunch of people talking tech. If someone isn't intrinsically familiar with how the chain and development works, it'd be hard for them to contribute or follow.
To be honest the best way to actually work together is through Github. If you go through https://github.com/steemit you can see the absolute accuracy of what's going on and what's being worked on. You can also comment on it and propose your own ideas in a way where everyone will see them. That's why one of the things witnesses and developers want is to be able to have increased contribution rights to the repo. That would make it a real community decentralized project.
Thanks for your reply. I'm just noting that I added my last comments on the end as an edit seemingly at the exact moment you replied, so just make sure you were aware of that if it would've influenced anything in your initial reply. I was reading through the invites file linked above and it was apparent that people were discussing who gets in and who doesn't, which obviously didn't seem super inclusive.
Thanks for the nice reply and for pointing me to Github. I know there are lots of good people such as yourself.