In a bit of fairness to the haters, Gnome 3 used to have a lot of graphical glitches and was unstable in a lot of its early iterations, but I broadly agree with your characterization.

I think if you actually give modern Gnome a chance (and actually make an attempt to learn it), it's actually a pretty slick desktop.

Years of fighting to restore basic features was funny the first time, but gnome 3 was not the first time; I do not blame anyone for not trusting that gnome won't pull the rug again, and soon.