Maybe I don’t understand the use case for bentopdf, and considering how popular it is, that is likely true
Especially in this day and age, be careful with believing something is right (or even popular) just becuse it looks popular. Talking about generalities of gameable metrics and the cognitive pattern, not to dunk on the project apart from their communications doing the same mistake.
It was certainly not intended as a character assessment and it's unfortunate you took it that way. I'm talking about how the release notes (and in passing your post) were written and not about you as a person or maintainer, or even the project itself.
I do hold release notes of a public project with thousands of users to a different standard than anon lemmy.world comments in a feedback thread. Is that interesting or surprising?
I believe there was actionable feedback given. You are of course free to dismiss it.