Gnome is great if you're willing to do things their way. I Like Gnome a lot actually.

Gnome's UI peaked at 2.32. Find out how the users operate and implement so users can work efficiently. Don't make changes just to make your mark or to make users work on the desktop like they see on a cell phone. That is so basic.

I don't know if you are DE shopping, but I've been very happy for the past few years with the MATE Desktop Environment, which "...is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems."

https://mate-desktop.org/

Among a great number of things I really like, I will mention that Caja, the MATE version of GNOME 2's Nautilus file manager, can still be switched to spatial mode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_file_manager

Generally speaking, I too really liked GNOME 2.32 and its predecessors, and, as far as I'm concerned, MATE is as it describes itself.

EDIT: Wording mistake.

I have no idea why Gnome keeps on insisting on breaking expectations. From the shell as a whole to the widgets and even the window titlebars they seem to insist on being different for the sake of being different.

Because their choices are better, at least for some of us. Users who prefer the traditional desktop paradigm have a wealth of alternative DEs to choose from.

I suppose my brutally minimalist Sway config with barely there titlebars and a skinny little status bar and not an icon, button, or widget in sight doesn't give me great standing to call for a respect of conventions.

I suppose I should say I found Gnomes luridly chunky decorations and widgets to be personally offensive.

What widgets? Gnome has just the one black bar at the top.

And it's a thick monster with all kinds of extra crap (I'm my not so humble opinion) shoved in it.

It literally has an activities button, the time and date, and a tiny button for interacting with settings on the right.

Gnome is always getting better (if you want to do things the Gnome way). Why should a DE show any elements begging to be clicked on my desktop while I am working (window list, etc)? I am only interested in what's in my IDE, terminal, and browser. Present Gnome comes closest to my ideal of fading into the background and letting me focus on my tasks.

These days KDE gets a lot of the same things right that GNOME 2 did.

Yes. I prefer having tools that do one thing well. That's the point of unix. How the user uses them should be up to her.

GNOME offering a monolithic environment with heavy opinionation is the opposite.

How is GNOME a "monolithic environment"? The entire GNOME ecosystem is basically small apps that do a single thing well:

https://apps.gnome.org/

So is X11, by that logic

https://cyber.dabamos.de/unix/x11/

That page literally just lists all sorts of random apps that work under X11, so yeah? Of course it's not a single monolithic system.

actually you do, because gnome is great