I didn't say your opinion is wrong, I said I'm unwilling to engage with it because of how you are expressing it. That may be "ad hominem" but not an "argumentum ad hominem" because there is no argumentum. I didn't say your argument is invalid because you're abrasive, I said I'm unwilling to argue with you because you are abrasive, regardless of whether you're wrong or not. Ironically, inferring that I'm trying to insult your characters or misrepresent your motives "because [I] don't have a counter-argument" is an "argumentum ad hominem".

Your first comment stated that the author was wrong to expect "exciting" plugins because the plugins he laments the existence of are "useful". I cited the author to clarify that his complaint was that the plugins are only useful because of limitations of the CMS core. I agree with the author that some of those limitations should be addressed by the CMS rather than being left to plugins.

Fine. Let's look at what you actually said:

> the problems they want to fix aren't the problems I want to fix

This seems tangential. What you or I or the author wants is probably not a useful metric for what should be a feature. The author's argument seems to be that if these are the most widely used plugins and they exist to augment or expand on existing functionality, that should be done in core so the plugins don't need to exist. You can disagree with arguing based on popularity but "I don't need it" is not a productive argument.

> I don't want to send emails with Wordpress

This implies Wordpress doesn't normally send emails. However Wordpress core has plenty of places where it sends emails (or tries to, often barely succeeding because it uses the built-in functionality of PHP which usually ends up in junk filters). Even changing the admin email address involves a confirmation email. I can see an argument that being able to provide an email SaaS backend should be a plugin but SMTP seems like a reasonable option if sending emails is part of Wordpress core's standard behavior.

> [I don't want to] do polls

I didn't say polls, I said forms, as did the author. Most websites have forms, usually at least a contact form. I'd wager more Wordpress websites have contact forms than comments and yet comments are enabled by default.

> The core does have import/export.

And yet the Wordpress Importer exists as an official plugin and is one of the most widely installed. If the functionality is important enough to have in core and the plugin is popular enough to be this widely installed, that sounds like the core functionality should be extended instead of having a plugin.

> Not having comments in the core would be controversial to say the least.

Yes, which is why I don't see it being removed. But they should probably not be enabled by default if they're prone to spam and it would be less controversial to move them out into a plugin once they're no longer enabled by default.

> Not to mention against the TFA complain ("not enough stuff in the core").

The complaint isn't "not enough stuff in the core" but "vital stuff missing in the core". It's not about adding "more stuff" but about extending what is there with what people are clearly missing.

> If we add the superset of features to the core Wordpress it would be a 1GB install, with a team of 100000 needed to maintain it.

That is a slippery slope argument and catastrophizing based on conjecture. You don't define "the superset" but it seems to include more than the author or I listed as things that should probably be handled in core.

> [Technical SEO] is [covered by the CMS], for the most part. The rest is SEO snakeoil the third-party plugins cover.

The author acknowledges the snakeoil part, however the plugins do add some things that aren't covered by the CMS. It seems reasonable to add functionality like being able to provide OpenGraph meta data to core, no?

> Are forms and email the role of a CMS?

Clearly Wordpress is not "a CMS", it's Wordpress. Are comments the role of a CMS? Arguably forms are more integral to "a CMS" than comments and comments are just a special case for it. And as I described above, sending emails is indeed integral to Wordpress so setting a proper transport for them seems like core functionality.