This seems a very over-hyped rant about what is essentially about two or three lines on an F-5.
If people really want to discuss the issue and actually progress the style let's actually discuss it and stop throwing the toys out of the pram.
I've been discussing some of these issues with eswube in PM separately in the light of the recent challenge. I see areas where we can improve and refine. Ultimately what people draw consistently together becomes the style over time. Rules are there for guidance to ensure anyone can join and start drawing and to provide a consistent basis. In theory anyone should be able to take a ship/plane/tank drawing from the archive and kitbash it or modify it relatively easily. In practice this happens less now, drawings are often too finely detailed and multi-layered to do this as easily but the basic concept should remain.
This is the WIP drawing of my challenge entry. Only 6 shades and black outlining for the entire drawing. You will observe that the canopy is outlined in darkest shade, as are the undercarriage doors. I agree that black can look ugly, I try to minimise it's use but that doesn't mean that I don't use it when necessary. (As an aside I love Blackbuck's salmon shades, I think everyone should be using this method, even if they don't use the salmons).
I agree that black can look ugly, I try to minimise it's use but that doesn't mean that I don't use it when necessary. For me outlines and external objects should be outlined in black, any hard 90 degree break (which the intake trunks and rear fuselage contours of the F-5 apply) should be outlined in black, control surfaces that move all the time should be outlined in black.
For anything else - curvy fuselages less than 90 degree break, canopy or door seals I am open to artist interpretation to use darkest shades possible.
Canopy outlining - for a pre-1950s unpressurised canopy (i.e. typical sliding hood) I would agree it should be black as its not integral with the airframe. For a modern sealed canopy the join line is very tight, more obvious than a panel line but not a clear break either. For me that is probably more realistically a very dark shade rather than black.
Cockpit transparency - this was always going to rear its head when we shifted away from cartoon blue window shades. There is no consistent approach yet, everyone has their own style. Some artists are using a transparent drawing layer now, but I think this makes it too 'milky'. Glass is see through - you either see through it or not.
Top-view shading - We're seeing is two schools of thought on how best to shade the top that allows you to bring out the curvature of the airframe - central spine highlight with equal shading each side Vs left highlight /right shadow.
The light source issue is tricky. If we assumed orthodox top-left corner then all top surfaces would be in highlight including the wings and the nose, only the tail section would ever be in shadow and the trailing edges of the wings. Likewise the hump behind a fighter canopy would be in shade too.
Left highlight/right shade at least allows some degree of flexibility, for example showing anhedral/dihedral on wings etc. As ewsube has noted, this does make recolouring a little tricker but I'm not sure that's a killer blow against the change.
Personally I am leaning to the left/right method, I think the results look better.
Riveting is a bugbear of mine, many artists are spam pixelling rivets that you would never see with the naked eye in most conditions. They also look messy.
Of those 1000, 990 could be tossed away, and we would still be more virile community than we were when this all started. So dont make the mistake of thinking you are an important, or that your dissident opinion about the entire core of the style matters, becouse in the end I does not. We created and forged this style and we keep doing it, refining it and mastering it, but not this way, not with this attitude. 
