For example, some users might desire major redesigns of past work but not bear the cost of the rework. As such, they might perceive some small improvement without any (direct) cost.
Personally, I think some groups have moved so far in the direction of community involvement that they forget the practical implications of diversity. Leadership is hard for many reasons — one big reason is that leading sometimes means making some people unhappy. Still, this is much better than inaction.
I will say this: in my personal experience, I've been a part of groups that struggle in dealing with complex decisions. Many times they get bogged down when they don't find a clear answer that satisfies everyone or all criteria. In many cases, such groups don't have a clear leader or the leader lacks the skills, experience, and character to do what is necessary; namely, choose (and communicate) the least-worst decision that keeps the ball moving forward.
In such cases, it is not necessary (and unrealistic to expect) that everyone agree with every aspect of every decision. A leader needs confidence and persistence to make tough decisions, as opposed to abdicating leadership. Some examples of the latter include (1) ignoring a choice until some default decision is made implicitly or (2) simply choosing the idea from the most vocal person.
Put more broadly, in this context, leaders must balance four aspects: (a) scoping and framing a decision; (b) gathering diverse points of view; (c) building some degree of consensus or buy-in; and (d) making a decision. It appears to me that the Rust language team handled all four comprehensively.
That's a non sequitur. Trust is not mandated by company boundaries. I for one trust in the competence of the Go maintainers, while at the same time having absolutely zero trust in Google as a company.
That's fine. But ultimately Go employees do not work for you and cannot put much effort into proving they are good at solving problems for you, since the company doesn't pay them to do it. There will not be a track record in users eyes of their design decisions and not much trust from users they are even capable of doing it well.
It absolutely does. Google has a vested interest in making Go a popular language outside of Google: It improves sentiments towards Google by association, and it means that Google has an easier time onboarding new hires since they probably already know Go.
I don't think that can explain the observations I've made. Either that or the sort of trust you describe is simply impossible, because I've never seen it in any language community I've been in.
I'd lean more towards a lack of clear description to the community for what they're looking for, and the community buying in enough that when communicating amoungst themselves they also do some lightweight enforcement of the expectations.