Well, I think that I did address your point. You want to channel the debate away from the criticism by imposing curiously (for a random comments thread on the net) strict rules, I think this should not be done. Freedom to rant surely must be one of the four freedoms..?
Anyway I don't care about Unity enough to criticize or praise it myself. So I never do. However I strongly defend everyone else's right to criticize it as they please, whether the subject is narrowly related to the shell, or to Ubuntu in a more broad sense, and this considering that Unity is so essential, so central to Ubuntu's identity and what differentiates it from the 400 other Debian-based spins.
The reason I even posted here originally was that the personal insults hurled at people who dislike Unity/Ubuntu are highly disturbing, imo. If that is the quality of the Canonical fanboydom nowadays then I must say that the wine has indeed been watered down.