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You can't position your community as fighting for "people like you", that you're so relatable and caring unlike The Man, and then create tools that force users to sift through pages and pages of documentation and tutorials to devise its operation. Actions speak louder than words.
It's not just a matter of how aesthetic design is seen as periphery or pointless (although it is that), but about how design as a whole appears to be a total non-priority for so many of these projects, when in fact there has never been a time where it has been more crucial.
We live in a world in a deluge of information and tech, where learning is constant and necessary; where everything continues to be locked down, where corporations and systems become more hostile to users and workers, and our grasp on controlling our own lives continues to slip.
If you're not thinking about what other people who are not you want, and what they might need, and how that may conflict with your own personal tastes, then you're not designing better tools for the world, you're just coach-building custom tools for yourself.
I'm sure your tool is very useful for your specific use case, but I'm looking for someone who can help me accomplish my task as painlessly as possible, and by and large that person doesn't appear to be you right now.
