I think NIP-27 and NIP-96 were very important to the protocol, although the latter was a real pain to get everybody on the same page and merge. It was also important to be there and nag about NIP-42 till fiatjaf (nprofile…2kfz) came up with the "CLOSED" message as a solution to most problems. I like unmerged inline metadata NIP that I think Vitor Pamplona (nprofile…2dqr) is still using and I will too but I guess nobody else is for now.
Some things had to change on the protocol before being too late to change, even though I wasn't implementing anything at the time.
I see your point though.