In all fairness:
1) Coins were doomed due to the previous seized block chain - enter Spots, with no pay and no obligation to assist getting the chain moving slowly.
2) It quickly became clear that the block chain was never going to reach 16,000 or 10,000 for that matter. The community was warned over several days and pages to make sure that their coins are in Bittrex and that unmoved coins will be lost and allocated to Spots to make the maths balance.
3) Those that kept their eye on the ball followed the attempts to get the chain rolling and to get to the coins of those that wanted to move them to Bittrex limping on a spare wheel and one cylinder to their destination.
4) Instead of waiting to number 99, most people immediately made efforts to move their coins in the few blocks that were still moving. Had I been a pool operator, I would have exercised due care and moved the pool's coins to Bittrex immediately for in case the chain seizes and the coins are lost, and let it simmer there until the swap happens or perhaps never happens and then move them back to the pool on the new chain. Also, miners on other pools moved coins themselves to Bittrex.
5) With a seized chain, waiting for block 10,000 would have meant waiting forever and it made no difference to smap them immediately or sometime in future since block 10,000 would never be reached anyways.
6) Well done to those that heeded the call to immediately move their coins to Bittrex, knowing that missed coins will be lost.
This can be debated both sides at length but the path chosen was perhaps not optimal, but the lesser of two evils.