Why give (false?) impressions and try to lure people with bells and whistles? You even admitted, once you learned you moved to kano, so will the other newbies. I don't think he cares to attract people (or waste his coding time) with fluff and no substance when that effort could be put into making the pool actually run better, not just look different.
I think we are in agreement here, however I do believe that there is a value in aesthetically pleasing layouts. Kano is an awesome pool, I don't think that giving it a facelift would give anyone a false impression considering the history of the pool. In ecommerce, millions upon millions of dollars are spent in research figuring out what people want the site to look like so that they'll visit site xyz more than site abc. If there was ever a desire or push to increase kano's pool size I think a refresh would be helpful. However at this point, if I had to choose between inner workings of the pool and the pretty stuff I tend to agree with you in that I would rather see kano's time spent under the hood. My comment was more or less intended as an idea that could help foster future growth.