Hi everyone,
First, I really appreciate your input and the fact you took the time to elaborate. We’re taking your feedback seriously.
We could have done a better job at informing you about the changes linked to introducing Clean Code in the product and explaining the reasoning behind them. We’re aware that there’s room for improvement in this area, and we want to be more transparent in the future.
Regarding the flexibility that was dropped, we made the change because we now have multiple severities associated with the new software qualities, which we will continue to extend. This means there is no single severity to change in the rule.
We understand that it has been valuable for your use cases and that some needs aren’t currently covered.
We want to understand your challenges and address the most important ones in the next SonarQube versions. In the coming weeks, we’re engaging in more discussions with our users around this topic.
Please help us get this right 
Chris