Not sure where you get these figures you toss around for the number of authors and active users. You maybe need to start following @elyaque who puts out those figures on a daily basis.

The numbers could be a lot better but you seem to prefer to them be a lot worse which to me places some of your other assumptions in question. I think we need to let the dev team try out what they have in mind knowing they will be willing to roll it back after looking at real figures on the effect the changes have.