When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":
The Gnome 3 adversity is ancient history at this point and in my opinion very much a fabricated feud to drive up news article engagement. Publishing an article with a few open bugs or a disagreeing opinion doesn't say much about the quality of the software in general.
I find the latest versions of Fedora with Gnome very usable, also in comparison with Windows/macOS. I don't have a need for very specific customisations and I think the Gnome people know it's but a tiny percentage of their users that use the very exotic features.
However, I think the GNOME 3 and 4 designers went too far and alienated many users:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-finds-gnome-3-4...
https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-42-the-nonsense-continues-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/wte7tr/gnomes_design...
https://linuxreviews.org/GNOME_Developers_have_Made_Their_Mo...
https://www.osnews.com/story/133955/gnome-to-prevent-theming...
When a designer's "coherent vision" eclipses the needs of the software's users then users get frustrated and either fork the project or go to another project. MATE (https://mate-desktop.org/), Cinnamon (https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon), and Unity (https://unityd.org/) exist largely because of how far the GNOME 3 designers went and how they were not willing to compromise their "coherent vision":
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=121162
https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1910
https://web.archive.org/web/20101129161856/http://www.pcworl...