I share Samson's view that it's the (perceived) echo chamber and people-centricity that causes a lot of the drama. I tried arguing it softly at #966323, but with no impact. Banning people from GH will increase the echos in the chamber.

However, the solution he mentions, to maintain a robust, non-corruptible version (I assume of the Bitcoin Core codebase) that ossifies hard, is something taking the role that I'd wish Bitcoin Core to be.

"A recap of the OP_RETURN "debate"

Core: Filters don't work. Bitcoiners: They obviously do, otherwise you wouldn't need to remove them.

Core: We don't have the technical means t maintain them, so we're removing the limit. Bitcoiners: We gave you the technical means in a PR two years ago, Core rejected it, it was implemented in Knots and it works.

Core: We can't stop all spam reliably, so why bother? Bitcoiners: Because life is not black or white, and fastening your seatbelt when driving a car is safer even though some people die in car crashes.

Core: Here's 7 transactions that even your precious filters didn't catch. Bitcoiners: Here's 2 million transactions that were caught.

Core: You can't censor valid transactions just because you don't like them. They paid a fee! Bitcoiners: There's millions of Nigerian princes contacting people through email every day. These are "valid transactions" too, yet you send those to spam. This is obviously not censorship, so that argument is deceitful and intellectually dishonest.

Core: What is spam objectively anyway? Bitcoiners: The receiver - not the sender - gets to decide what's useful to them. You're removing the ability of nodes to decide that, implying you know best.

Core: These transactions will end up in blocks anyway, and we can't incentivize profit-seeking miners to go out-of-band. Bitcoiners: It's not your job to incentivize or deter miners. Your job is to work on the Bitcoin client while prioritizing the one thing that makes Bitcoin unique and truly decentralized: nodes.

Core: But we want better fee estimation and block propagation. Bitcoiners: So do we, but never at the expense of decentralization and self-sovereignty. And btw, there is no such thing as "the mempool. Nodes run the show.

Core: This is a technical discussion. Stop philosophying and using analogies, you plebs! Bitcoiners: We gave you a technical solution that works, the philosophic rationale and the logical arguments. Stop turning Bitcoin into a shitcoin.

If you're seeing bias here, it's because you're too stubborn to admit that one side is clearly more informed, rational and morally calibrated than the other.

This is why there's distrust in Core. It's got nothing to do with technical competency and rational discourse. It's just pure and simple political shenanigans, whataboutisms, strawman arguments and in some cases sheer lies."