My beef was that JaronK sees no need to adjust any standing based on other people's experiences. Look at my original post before malign me. JaronK makes himself out to be objective, and we that use classes that he doesn't know as well as biased. He creates a situation where he is always right, even on classes that he himself has little to no first hand knowledge.
You seem to be assuming a lot here, and I'm not sure why. I DO use other people's experiences. However, I've found that everyone has favorite classes... classes that they work better on. I do too (my favorites are generally skillmonkeys and necromancers). It's just instinct. As such, for every person there will be a few favorite classes that look to low on the system simply because they're good with that class and not with other classes. I'm not very good with Druids for example... they just don't click for me. Yet I can do all sorts of impressive stuff with a Factotum. Does that mean Druids are worse than Factotums? No, it means I like playing skillmonkeys, and my playstyle works better with them.
The point of what you quoted is not "I know better than you." The point is "whichever class is your favorite will look too low to you." When I play a Factotum, it's going to be far stronger than when I play a Favored Soul. The point is also not "I won't listen to your opinion." It's "your opinion might be colored by what classes you like better than others, and I'll take that into account." I have used other people's arguments for where a class goes... I placed the Psychic Warrior based on Lurker's (and others') arguments, in fact, and that's also how the Eurdite got placed. I've wavered a LOT on the Barbarian, Duskblade, and Hexblade based on people's arguments too. But very often I'll have one or two people going off about how great one class is, and a bunch of others are saying the class just isn't as good, and in that case I tend to go with the idea that the people who are raving about the class probably just play it more and are more familiar with it.
But do you really want me to place the Fighter where someone like Aelrynth says it should go? Should I place the Monk based on where Sir G. thinks Monks belong? How about all the people who think Rogues are Tier 2 along with Sorcerers? Or the people who think Sorcerers belong down near Tier 5 because they suck so much?
I do listen to people's arguments, and I take a long time to decide if I want to move a class (because if I keep switching every week it's just plain confusing). I just also take into account that there may be some bias, and I ask that people not get offended if their favorite classes aren't quite as high as they think they should be. Take it as a compliment... if you can make a Fighter totally outperform a Warblade, then you're probably quite good with Fighters. Go you. But please don't assume in that case that you're making Warblades as well as you make Fighters.
The FAQ entry is not to say "I don't need to listen to you." It's to say "please don't be offended if your favorite class isn't as high as you think it should be." Everyone's favorite class(es) should look too low to them. That's just how it is.
Also, note that I do not assume "average optimization" or "high optimization" or "low optimization." I assume equivalent optimization. Any time I see someone arguing for where their class could be, I start trying to match what they did with classes one tier up or one tier down from them and see what I get. For example, when Lurker started talking about Beguilers could do powerful things and get solid utility spells because they could take Arcane Disciple and get powerful spells, I realized that he was using the Complete books to add spells to their spell list, at a cost of needing Wisdom and one feat. So I thought about what a Sorcerer doing the same thing would get... for the effective cost of one feat (since you would have taken a metamagic feat anyway most likely and you get another one free when you enter the class) and the inability to take other PrCs, a Sorcerer could take Mage of the Arcane Order. Similar cost, also from the completes, with a similar goal (gain more spells) but suddenly instead of getting one or two solid powerful utility spells you get books and books of them. So I felt comfortable that with similar optimization, a Sorcerer is still far stronger than a Beguiler. Meanwhile, doing the same thing with a Warmage gets you something weaker than a Beguiler (since your base spell list is much worse). So it all works out. I read his arguments, but when applied to other classes they didn't quite work.
I will strongly disagree however with the idea that the point of optimization is to take it to the top. Breaking games isn't fun (at least to me). If I wanted, I could easily make Warblades that do near infinite damage, but that's hardly fun, so I don't. I stopped making Shadowcraft Mages for similar reasons. The point of optimization, in my opinion, is to make your character capable of doing what you think it should be capable of doing when you sit back and imagine what your character would be like. If you want to play with world shattering power you can optimize for that, or you could just optimize to the point where your character is a particularly scary assassin (and has the abilities to back that up), or you could do what I recently did and make a character who was just really good at building stuff because he's on a personal mission to improve the world. Could I make that last character able to instantly develop the whole world in any way he wants via flowing time genesis tricks? Sure, but once I accomplish that goal the character's not fun to play anymore... at that point I'd retire. So that's no fun. So I don't think the point of optimization is to go for the max. It's just to go where you want your character to go.
JaronK