I've been out of the loop for a while and only skimmed the last few pages, but to my understanding it seems that b4nny and some others(as seen in a screenshot) discussed about the banning/unbanning of certain unlocks such as bonk?
Was there any large community poll/survey recently looking for the opinions of the players on whether an all the unlocks should either:
1. stay banned for next season
2. maybe has potential to be unbanned
3. could try unban for next season
or etc. in any shape or form? This matters because for a long while there had been a certain opinion or perspective that I have somewhat sided with and seen in some posts in this thread, which is in relation to the argument about "unbanning more unlocks so that Valve sill support us" and other sorts of arguments/debates.
At this rate, Valve isn't going to support us any time soon from much indication or listen to us that much, and it's possible that it's never going to happen as many believe. During the time/era when Valve was doing amazing things as a company in general and for their other games, TF2 didn't get much of a further push for the competitive scene, what makes us think that in even more recent times where the company(in different areas/aspects) has lately been "making some mistakes" Valve/TF2 team will even work to help support competitive TF2 in a larger contributing factor?
Aside from that, I think one thing I noticed is that some people have acknowledged for a while now or more recently that competitive TF2 only has a few years left or has a limited amount of time left and that they want to play the game while it still has players playing, the balance/style of competitive is still being played, and generally it's still fun to play and that the unlocks that are banned/unfun stay that way. Competitive TF2 is great and some people often play it for a reason, whether they enjoy a competitive environment, the meta is fun, the style of play is preferred compared to pubs, or a mix of all those or something else. The competitive TF2 community is still a small community, of course it has perhaps gotten either smaller or larger over the years as we may lose some players and gain new players over time.
Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that it is important to take into consideration of what many of the players think rather than just a specific # of specific people(Invite or whatnot) who will get to decide what gets added or removed to the game that people enjoy playing for a reason. Multiple players of varying skill levels(Invite, IM, Open, or etc. from EU) should be able to put in their feedback/response in some way so that way we can see not what only the "top/important players" are leaning towards in the opinions of banning/unbanning, but we can see a popular vote at the same time to see what a good # of the community thinks. Everyone should have a fair way to say something and show their feedback, because it's not just X number of people's game(referring to those who got to discuss it internally), it's the community's game.