I personally appreciate the push the core devs make for a "less demanding" relationship between users and open source devs. I think they have a point and it's good for long term sustainability and I'll probably find myself defending it.
But I like you're framing, and in retrospect it seems (as is usually the case) that some people organising was what was missing just to get everyone helping each out as much and efficiently as possible. While any member of the community can (and should) do that, at some point it makes sense for the core devs to take on a task like that, I agree.