Look, it doesn't take a genius to know what the top players want. They already vote for the unlocks each season with their respective league admins. We don't have to have a public forum in which we can observe the conversations of top players debating the unlocks. They have already voted and the whitelist that Aoshi published is representative of that discussion. Based on that discussion, it's clear that top players want a whitelist at least for certain weapons and classes that are seen as not fun or broken, and the whitelist is here to stay. That's totally fine by me!
All I'm saying is, we should try to make fair bans. The bans will come into question by both insiders and outsiders when they're specifically targeting classes that break the existing metagame, and they will come into question when:
1) We ban weapons that are powerful for underpowered classes, and
2) When we ban underpowered weapons for being seen as "not fun"
Are the bans against Dragons Fury and GRU justified? How about Natascha or Fists of Steel? Right now, in the comp scene, entire classes are being seen as not fun, which is really unfortunate. But sure. Go ahead, it's your league, it's your game, do whatever is most fun. I agree with this approach, and you have every right to ban these things.
But we can't push for a world in which our game is both supported by the developer and a world in which we control all the rules at the same time. At some point I envision a time in which we hand control of our game over to the game developers to balance the competitive game. I feel and hope that they should/would make decisions that are good for the comp scene and ultimately make them the most money. Unfortunately, what's good for making Valve money hasn't quite aligned with what's good for the comp scene just yet. So I'm in favor of whitelists for now with the hope that we can one day not have one.