I can see it might be hard to find the relevant thoughts shared by staff yeah but I don’t think there’s anything “cagey” about what has been said, so was confused by that characterization.
Next to observation fields, I added this text to the pinned feature request topic you linked to: “(individual fields are user-controlled and there are no plans to develop these further)”
Maybe, like Guides, there should be a banner at the top of the Observation Fields homepage to indicate that as well, if that’s still the plan:
https://www.inaturalist.org/guides
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields
