Lack of out of the box configurability, lack of ease of discovery of configurability, lack of dependability on third party pieces (which may be essential to my workflow, that third party widget in Xfce isn't).
That initiative looks like a good move, I don't mean to disparage that.
> In the gnome shell, the extension API is built-in and standard. That is the configurability.
And that's not a good mechanism for me, as discussed.
> If you're asking for specific panel settings to be included by default
Yes, that's specifically my preference, for a system the user can configure, easily/out of the box, without relying on third parties to patch some really simple stuff back in.
> It's not really possible for the shell to act the way you're asking.
I'm not asking the shell to act any particular way, nor am I asking for changes in Gnome. I have had no real interest in Gnome since the 2->3 transition and this approach is part of that.