I guess I need to repeat myself as well?
1. like the direction of making ore rarer.
Okay.
2. find the current level of implementation (.19) lacking and not fun to play (regarding mining)
So don't play the current version.
3. am voicing my bafflement at people who think the changes made in .19 are fine as they are now
Some people like things which you do not. You can express your bafflement all you want, but what I find fun and what you find fun aren't going to be the same thing. Coming here to tell me that you find my idea of fun strange serves no purpose at all, yet you keep doing it.
Your ideas are your own. You're allowed to like whatever you want. Where we run into problems is where what you, and people like yourself, "like" starts to interfere with what other players like Cotes and myself like. I would love to play around with the new features in .19 as well, but I am restricted from doing so because a few people like you demanded that your own self-imposed "limits" on available resources be forced onto everyone else.
It is clear that you play a very different style of dwarf fortress than I do. Clearly, you are drawn to the challenge of survival with limited resources, and I respect that. I am more attracted to the siege and megaproject side of things. My problem comes when you start to force your playstyle onto mine - and I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that the changes to minerals in .19 are very much forcing players towards your preferred playstyle.
I know I don't have to play .19, so I'm not. That doesn't mean, however, that I want to stay with .18 forever either. Bugfixes in the future will not be released for previous versions, and, having waited a long time looking forward to a new version, I'm a bit miffed about not being able to have any fun playing it due to my preferred style of play being blown to hell because of people demanding that their silly fantasy computer game be more "realistic."
Bad things happen when you fix what isn't broken.