In a way it isn't fair. Most users of most programming languages don't know the language very well. So the views of these programmers are important.
If someone wants to represent the 'average' programmer then the best way to do it would be to educate themselves on the language and the current state of standardization and then participate as an advocate for those programmers.
It seems that the people who are supposed to be speaking for the regular programmers aren't doing a particularly good job.
I agree with this. The people at CppCon are very smart, very informed, and very very pro-C++. It's silly to think that such a person (people on the committee, no less), would be a good spokesperson for your everyday programmer.
However, that's certainly not the main problem keeping C++ complexity high. Even though the committee genuinely wants improvement in this area, there is too much fear of breaking legacy code, and too many early design mistakes to overcome on the path back to a simpler C++.
I'm not personally that interested in making it my mission to help educate people who don't want to be educated but perhaps it would be a valuable way for someone to get involved. People complaining on the basis of wrong information or misunderstandings aren't likely to be taken terribly seriously though.
