You keep putting different versions of words in my mouth, but I would endorse that formulation of the "original". Popularity will crush technical features in a pretty short timeframe. The technical features have an opportunity to pull people in, but it is very limited and then that version will be pushed toward 100% or 0%. It is not sustainable to split the market, unlike most markets. You can compare different markets this way, seeing if it's true or false for that market, so it's definitely not a truism.
> Again, ETH was forked off the original Ethereum chain and won (it has ~98% hashrate) so it is not necessarily a bad idea to attempt one.
It means it's a bad idea to try to split things, because even in that case splitting didn't work.
So you'd better be damn sure that a powerful majority will want your version. You can't rely on merely many people wanting it.
Also, you don't think that having it be named Ethereum is a bit of a special case?
If you fork bitcoin or ethereum, you won't be taking the name with you.