While messages (or texts in general) written in English, are sometimes prone to be misunderstood if it comes to understanding the terms and styles of address, due to the illusive nature of the pronoun "you" I would like to point one simple aspect of your message out to all the reader and perhaps yourself. 

If "you" is used by you, Mr Shuttleworth, to address me, as a person, I have to question why, exactly I am the evil doer now, especially if I have done nothing wrong but to speak out what was already written many times before? I only emphasized that it could be rather helpful for any person participating in a community to understand the processes used in decision making. And by referring to this wish to understand the process, I only participated in a discussion started by this bug report (which was not filed by me, so here again, who is meant with "you"?). So again: "on what data was that design decision based?" And who actually participated in the process of making the decision? A simple question which can be answered in many forms, but none of the replies and answers yet given to this question, has ever been addressing the question itself. I only hear you utter your own complaints about those complaints that are brought forward by other. If the community is, in your opinion, a factory of bug solvers and bug filers, then please say so. But if the community is, or should be, a community of those who are enthusiastic about Ubuntu, have visions about Ubuntu, want to spread Ubuntu ... then you should take the opinion of these people into account and attach more value to their words. 

I spent many hours to set up Ubuntu PCs for my friends and for my family. I talked about Ubuntu and promoted Ubuntu at work and wherever else I could. There are many entries, filed by my, in many places on the internet, where I tried to promote Ubuntu. So in your opinion this is worth nothing, because I -- and many other -- are selfish and demand without providing solutions. I am sorry. I studied Latin, Greek, English and French with a focus on historical comparative linguistics. I am a linguist, or more precisely a philologist. So I am not a programmer. Am I to be rendered mute by this fact, because I can only speak my opinion if I contribute to software by programming it? Is this your vision of Ubuntu? A "quid pro quo" or "do ut des"  relation? Indeed, Ubuntu, the name of an operating system for every human being. 

I defended Ubuntu and especially Unity. I said it will mature and many of its feature, like the dash, like indicators, are very promising. I hoped that there would be reasoning if 154 users voted for "affect me", so that at least somehow  the decisions that was made would be reconsidered. So that at least somebody would  tell the people "we will think about it, but we cannot promise that we will change anything". Instead it was a "it stays that way and Basta!" decision. This is what this bug is about. And this is what you did not understand a bit. The word is  "transparency". I do not demand a change in the system, I do demand an explanation why the change will not be done. And do not tell me that making it possible to change the position of the launcher will produce bugs and tons of errors. Some time ago it was said, by one of the lead developers, by one of your lead developers, that it would take two weeks to change this and a little bit of additional time for fine tuning. 

So what is the answer to this. To 154 people? And supposedly there are more than 154 people, but most of them will perhaps not have a launchpad account. Unity is great in many aspect. And I can ignore the current problems with the multi monitor support, despite the fact that I work with two monitors. For it was communicated very early that these problems will be addressed. And I was content with it. But some decision I do not understand and I deem these decisions pure ignorance. I am sorry to put it that way, but I have an opinion, I have a mouth to speak this opinion, and I have a mind to assess the answers which I hear. 
Disagree with me. Disagree with 154 people. That can happen. Plato was not a friend of democracy either. The reign of the mindless he called it. Still he intended the good for the people. If this is your idea of making decisions, then this works for me. But be honest about it. Say that you do not want opinions. That you want only exchange. And if my private and puny work at promiting Ubuntu is not enough to take me serious. And if among those 154 people is nobody deemed worth to be paid attention than be it that way. But then you should think about closing launchpad, for then it is not for the public, then it is only for those who contribute and are actively working to develop Ubuntu. What will I then loose next? Will we loose the possibility to switch between Keyboard layout? Because there are not many people who write in English, Greek, French and Hebrew on the same PC? That would strip away another error source. Perhaps you should fix the wallpaper. Why should I be able to change the wallpaper at all? There is not need in this and people only are used to be able to change it because they know that it is possible on WIndows and Mac OS. We can reeducate all of them. You can reeducate all of them. And as long as all of these decisions are a design decisions it will always be hard to question those decisions. Because nobody can find a contra argument. One needs an elaborated explanation of a "design decision" to disprove this decision. So leave it that way. We do not want explanations. It makes the world very complicated. And in the world of discussions it is like in the world of computers. Too many features produce errors. So let's leave out this feature of "explanation", it could result in  somebody finding an error in the decisions, which these explanations try to explain. And that would make our head ache, wouldn't it?