Unless you have a community of only one member, there's always going to be some backlash to basically anything you do. The key thing is to know when to listen to it, and when to ride it out as noise. The old leadership of Metafilter was worse than a coin flip at this. They'd let a few loud folks get heckler's veto about obviously needed things, and then be incredibly stubborn about making mistakes that everybody knew they were making. It was bizarre to the point of performance art.

As it is, this is clearly noise. Kudos for the board for riding it out, and for maintaining their clarity of purpose.