In reply to Carolina Nymark.

Caveat emptor: My comments are all based on a pre-2016 viewpoint. After that I just stopped caring about the WPTRT's rules and actions - it in fact started giving me a sense of perverse satisfaction to see it all fall apart. Prior to 2016 I don't recall having seen your name in any of the forums, so I can only surmise that you became active as a reviewer much later.

Tweeting “I did not like XXX” is not speaking up.
Being angry on Post status slack is not speaking up.
Going to the WPTavern comments section saying “requirements are too difficult”, but choosing to not even reply when the team follows up asking which requirement?, that is not speaking up.

There was a mailing list for the WPTRT earlier (http://lists.wordpress.org/pipermail/theme-reviewers/ for archived threads). Commenting there was speaking up. Tell me how this was not a case of developers speaking up.

Several Trac tickets for theme reviews used to get into animated discussions about reasonableness. Commenting there was/is speaking up.

Several developers were passionate about being heard earlier. But when the WPTRT started enforcing rules of all sorts, rather than spend an insane amount of energy typing out emails in losing arguments, a much simpler alternative emerged: walking away. And at that point, nobody really cares about which shiny new toy the review team has started using, and they will use Twitter and the comments on WPTavern to vent. I say this having been the developer of probably the first non-default theme to have hit a million downloads on .org, and deciding to walk away when the requirements became too much to keep pace with.

Look - you can talk about it whichever way you like, but the WPTRT's handling of requirements have caused tens (and probably hundreds) of developers to walk way in disgust and frustration. Something as simple as the use of the term "responsive" in a theme's name became grounds for heated arguments. And I won't even get into something like the Customizer becoming a requirement.

Actively participating in meetings and suggesting ideas. Reading the blog posts about upcoming changes, replying to the discussion posts when the team asks for feedback. Opening Trac tickets and actively working on and following through on those ideas.
– That is how you make your expectations and your concerns heard.

You are making an assumption that the people who stopped contributing did not follow any of these. The problem is that there is a difference between getting "your expectations and your concerns heard" and getting "your expectations and your concerns addressed". The hundreds who walked away had no issues getting themselves heard, rather they had issues with the WPTRT's general attitude bordering on, "Yup, we hear you. We know that it sucks for you, but that is not our problem".

Convince those who walked away that the situation has changed via immeasurable actions (dropping everything but licensing, security and standards-compliance requirements) and measurable impacts (reduction in wait times, increase in contributions from new users), and you will have truly made your case.
- That is how you prove that expectations and concerns are being heard. Otherwise all of this sounds just too preachy.