I think NIP-27 and NIP-96 were very important to the protocol, although the latter was a real pain to get everybody on the same page and merge. It was also important to be there and nag about NIP-42 till @fiatjaf came up with the "CLOSED" message as a solution to most problems. I like unmerged inline metadata NIP that I think @Vitor Pamplona is still using and I will too but I guess nobody else is for now. Some things had to change on the protocol before being too late to change, even though I wasn't implementing anything at the time. I see your point though.