@chris While I sympathize with the premise, as phrased it does seem too vague/broad for this site and agree with Domen's comments. "List vs Association" is a more concrete/focused question that has many good answers and might even get to the heart of your frustration. A generic question around managing keyword explosion in the language might not have broad appeal, as most people won't know/care about new functions in an area outside their domain of interest.

@chris - for what it's worth I've read the question twice now and have no clue what it is asking (what is a 'keyword' in mathematica? what are they multiplied by?). Questions need to be concise and specific.

@chris I always thought of asking a community wiki question which asks to show command in Mathematica which can be done using no more than 3 other commands. For me, adding a new command which can be done by existing commands leads to the exploding of commands you are talking about. But the new command has to be done by no more than 2-3 other existing commands. I think such community wiki will be useful and probably answers what you wanted to see.

Here are couple of random examples. I have many more. For example the new command DigitSum can already be done using other commands. See mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/39122/… and the command SolveValues can be done using current commands. For example Solve[eq, x] /. Rule[x, any_] :> any // Flatten does the same as SolveValues[eq, x] and so on. Each person can then add their answer showing more examples.

So may be you could think about making such community question. I think the answers will be useful. The rule again is that the command must be done using no more than 2 or 3 other commands. I do not have time now to set one up with more examples.

But I should have given more thoughts about phrasing.