I think the crux of the issue is that my perfect interface to Discourse is different to what others ideal interface is. We ship a “default” that is a “one size fits all” which @codinghorror makes all the final calls on.
We ship today a site customisation section that lets discourse admins adjust to taste.
We will never be able to get to a global agreement of what the “ideal” minimal design is, but I can, in theory, have a theme that I own and maintain that is my “ideal” minimal design.