[T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide] WeekendsR2Short:
You do make some excellant points! Bear in mind I'm no coder/deveolper but I'd be happy to give up my take on what I've gathered about the subject since I've been frequenting this site.

The Development threads are a bit more 'formal'....and rightly so. It keeps the discussion from spiraling into something it wasn't originally started for by the OP. But all the other forums & their threads are much more liberal as you'll see.

Now then your questions.....

1. WildChildIcE is THE ICS ROM you're going to want to keep your eye on IMHO. This one is an AOKP ROM which seems to give you the usefullness & freedoms of Sense without the bloat & huge size. From what I've been able to tell it merges most if not alll of the great features of ICS into one ROM where not all do. VERY customizable, many themes available, smooth, quick, OC/UC available, good battery life, etc. A very usable Beta ROM.

2. A Sense ROM I've not tried yet but being 3.6 it should be smoother & quicker than the GB Senses that you may have experienced. At least, they seem that way to me. Although the developer hasn't returned he has labeled it as relatively 'bug-free' but the things not working are sometimes deal breakers for folks. The wide format camcorder CAN be worked around but wifi tethering to my tablet is pretty important to me. There's been no updates & relatively few user comments although it's using Tbalden's 1.5 OC kernal and it's a GOOD one supporting Sense 3.6.

3. CM9 is another I haven't used yet, per se. Except for the fact that XMC's ROM has been temporarily merged with it for stability purposes and to bypass a couple of stubborn bugs. It's my understanding that it will return to pure AOKP by full release which will bring back the feature 'ROM Control'. You've not seen that in GB or Froyo and you will LIKE it! I've been using the latest nightly simply because the phone proximity sensor is working.

4. This being an UNofficial CM9 KANG, it will most likely have the same features and shortcomings the official CM9 does along with a few new features the developer saw as something he and other users might like. (This is basically where all the different flavors of ICS....GB....& Froyo come from). PLUS, when finished, CyanogenMod is a ROM that others most always aspire to be as thoroughly debugged as.

5. This is a ROM by an amazing developer...Tbalden. This ROM was 'orphaned' here when Tbalden joined The Virtuous Team and transformed there (www.virtuousrom.com) into (what I consider) one of the best most stable ICS ROMs out there called Virtuious Inquisition. As a matter of fact when I flashed it to my wife's phone she told me "ALRIGHT....this is the ONE! Now STOP CHANGING MY PHONE"! LOL It is a complete fantastic ICS with a battery life outta this world. TRY it.....you'll LIKE it!

6. ANOTHER fantastic ROM by Tbalden. Need I say more? The only thing I can remember being not being near perfect is the dialer being slightly shifted to the right but still completely usable. Futureal/Virtual Inquisition was the one he was inspired to compose while he was working on this one. Like I said before.....need I say MORE?

7. There are several other you might want to try that are now longer actively linked here. Over at Rootzwiki, check out a developer called Undeadk9. He did some GREAT things for our phone with some creations that lots of folks still use regularly. Myself included.

TRY some of these and I believe you'll be able to answer your general question at the bottom of you post all by yourself. The answer will be evident to you.

Good Luck....and Welcome to XDA!