This was a bad way to announce closing these issues. With a big list like that, everyone's going to find something they're pissed off about not having. They should have closed the issues slowly and quietly in the background - individually they're small enough that people probably wouldn't notice. But like this, many more people see what's happening and get angry together. Not a good way to do PR.

Maybe the idea was to rip the band-aid off and hope the outrage burns out quickly.