The issue tracker is meaningless, if you read what other things are on it. A lot of it reads as wishes rather than actual game breaking problems that keep being ignored.
You keep saying the tracker is meaningless as some sort of counter to like a 1000 people voting for the issue. You can say it is meaningless all you want, it doesn't detract away from the fact that this many people actively identified the issue themselves and then went and voted for it. I actually have a rough, but measurable, estimate for the quantity of people that want to see this fixed. You currently have no estimate or anything near community consensus for not thinking this issue is a priority. The only thing you are going off of is your own, and maybe a few other's, personal opinions. Whether the issue tracker actually works or not is completely besides the point, as its function of just tallying votes alone is enough to support my point. 1000+ people VS a few opinions ...
Exploration for me is not finding new and exciting heightmaps. 'Exploration' in ED is sightseeing with little ongoing purpose like surveying new systems for the BGS, or selling mining finds, or capturing new animals to sell found at remote locations.
aka "how people that aren't interested in exploration view exploration." Sightseeing ≠ exploration. My grandma going on a cruise ≠ Marco Polo. Sightseeing could be seen as included within exploration gameplay, however it is a small fraction of it.
So you are saying then, after all these years (with exploration having lots of content updated and added) other aspects are not as important that have seen nothing, and should be quiet again because some OCD people see two identical lumps in the soil and FD should redo the lot as a priority?
Exploration, Combat and Trade are the core gameplay features of Elite. Don't be surprised when they get more attention then something more niche like Powerplay or C+P. Plus Odyssey's tiling has worsened planetary exploration as we have already established. Imagine if they updated C+P, but made it worse, refused to polish/repair it and then you see exploration players on the forums essentially saying "you've had your update, now be quiet". That's basically what you're doing and it's not helping the situation. This is either a case of extreme whiteknightery on your behalf or you just genuinely don't care about exploration gameplay. Either way, your opinion just doesn't equate to the large portion of players that wanted to see this fixed and are unhappy with this news.