: I strongly disagree. Having a more open dialogue with fans is one of the best
: ways to get an idea of what direction would benefit your product the most,
: and doesn't require you to sacrifice your company's integrity. Having the
: "just wait and see!" approach is how we end up with god-awful
: mess after mess with 343. Just look at how stupid "New Blood"
: is, despite them saying "Ho boy, the fans are gonna love this!"

What were they supposed to do, tell people the plot of the book and have them say "no that sucks", and then go back and change it until it meets some minimum bar of good feedback?
I'll go out on a limb and say I'll get answered with "no, they should've hired a good writer", and respond to that with: writing quality is mostly a matter of opinion, and you can't know exactly how a writer will handle a story until they've written it. Going to a bunch of writers to get the same story done would surely take a lot of time and money, and every writer that didn't get theirs published would probably be unhappy with the arrangement. As for opinion, I don't see how they could fix having a different opinion of what good writing is than the fans do other than with something like focus testing, and I don't think anybody really wants that.

: People ask because they want to, if nothing else, remind 343 that there is an
: existing market for "x", whatever it may be. It tells them that
: people care, and would like to know that they are acknowledged. Saying
: "Don't bother asking anything, because we won't say" is
: effectively shutting the door in thousands of people's faces. That's not
: how you rebuild a sputtering franchise.

As much as you or I might not like it, very few people and very little money is hanging on the words of a weekly look at the canon, or even stuff like the novels, possibly not even campaign. Saying "don't ask because we won't answer" only shuts a door if you don't understand that you can phrase it as a statement or request instead of a question. It's not like this is the only line of communication, and I would think they're not banning people for making statements and requests in response to these posts.

: There's a game that I play where the developers are extremely open with fans,
: and even involve them in the creative process (How much better is
: "Fistful of Arrows" than 343's "Hah! Jun is alive because
: Shut Up! We can't come up with a good reason so deal with it."), and
: the product is all the better for it.

For that in particular, I think they don't want to step on the toes of FFoA, whether it's because it's held in high regard or because the canon is too close to the fan work for the legal team to be comfortable.

: It's a typical BS answer. Rather than acknowledge any mistake or need for
: revision, 343 stays true to themselves and makes it seem like this was the
: plan "The whole all along!".

Of course it's BS, but it's also an answer that doesn't erase things that people like. They've probably taken enough flack for messing with canon to realize the fans are happier letting the things they know from before continue to exist more or less how they knew them from before. You can see that with both types of Banshees being canon, the continued appearance of the old style of Mark VI Mjolnir, and now this. They're saying, "You like that armor? Good news, it's canon."
Of course, they also said the anniversary graphics are the definitive version of things, which implies they don't get that.

: Tl;dr I think a more open and honest dialogue with fans is the way to go.
: Sometimes you won't have all of the answers, but that's better than making
: crap up or dismissing the question altogether.

It's fiction, it's all making crap up. What does it matter if it was made up 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago? OK, I can see how it might matter to you, it matters to me too, but it can't be helped. The story is not a static thing, and telling us when something was thought up distracts you from the story-- hence them talking about the "Halo Bible" this time, I think.