You approach a lot of subjects in this post. Like promised here is my take on this:

• the main issue is the lack of process and on this topic a lack of process in quality assurance. I see that the tactic here is very agile.
• most top20 follow blindness the Steem Inc decisions due to the sweet spot they are in. I can't blame them, because this is human nature.
• the communication is bad in many ways. After the HF, you have a not functioning blockchain (and by functioning I don't refer to a block producing one) and you come up with a post that it was success. In a normal world stopping the functioning of a 300 mil USD company would be considered as a major fail and heads would have fallen.
• yes, it is true that the code is available and we all can check it. The positive thing is that there is a testnet available, which was introduced recently.
• the technology is new but almost every piece of technology or software like in this case was new at a certain time in history and was done under a certain process and testing.
• I think one of the main problems is that we still have the Beta mark. It is like a waiver for all failures.

This are some ideas. Like said, the communication is not the best and most are not aware what is needed, where the community shall help and intervene. An idea to motivate people would be to delegate some SP for a month to the ones that find the bugs.