There's just got to be a way to get the word out about these types of situations. Personally, I was alerted that the plugin was removed from the repository via the Wordfence plugin. Otherwise, I'd have no idea that this happened (and I work with WordPress and follow news daily).

As for the defensive stance seen in the forums, I can attest to it. A forum post where we were discussing what happened to the plugin was closed to new comments:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/display-widgets-plugin-v2-6-3-1-includes-hacking-code/page/2/

With the moderator stating:
"I’m going through and closing posts about this. There’s little point in people going around and slamming others about this. Remember: people can be mean, but you don’t have to be."

I don't even think anyone was directly trying to slam anyone. It was just a frustration of how this plugin was getting removed and re-added over the summer and that warnings about its malicious code may not have been handled so well.

We just need a way to warn others when something like this occurs. Even if it's a small notice on the plugins page.