Just because I heard about DF on cesspit.net, I'll add my opinion to the heaving pile.
I'm personally shocked that people are willing to continue to donate when it goes two years without an update, and when all that's being worked on is adventure mode. Then again I'm shocked people enjoy adventure mode, and they do.
I would like to see job priorities, the changes at the top of the suggestion voting, and more performance improvements and I'm willing, eager, to donate if they happen. But as long as Toady can live fine doing what he likes to do it won't happen and I guess I'm ok with that. I don't really have a choice
On the other hand I don't care about UI improvements. The mods stuff is working fine, and being a little brutal, Toady clearly doesn't have the programming experience to design a good Model/View/Controller API. Not many people do.
All that said, I remember a talk where the sewage question came up, and Toady said he didn't like the idea because having more things that interrupt dwarves would break the fortress mode gameplay. They would likely spend all their time moving between bed, dining room, drink, breaks and toilet and never get anything done. This kind of question is much more interesting to me, and I think much more central to the design of an indirect control game like DF, dungeon keeper, etc. than UIs or trees or even wheelbarrows and minecarts. Work on this area could even affect adventure mode. Servants to go gather food for dinner, or routines where someone always breaks for work at midday and goes to the toilet after etc. Looking ahead to how long it'll take to travel the path they made and whether they'll get hungry in that time. Lots of very cool AI and gameplay possibilities that we don't get explored.
I've turned this into a suggestion. Sorry. Lets be glad I avoid multitheading and move on to the the next layer of opinion in the pile.