This article was written in the sense of bashing gnome but yet some points seem to be valid. It explains the history of gtk 1 to 4 and the influence of gnome in gtk. I’m not saying gnome is bad here, instead I find this an interesting to read and I’m sharing it.
Hold your horses, when I said “exist because” I was implying any particular time frame, I was just saying that if GNOME was really that superior everything else would’ve already died out without users / developers.
If we are getting pedantic here, the above quote is clearly implying that alternatives exist and are actively developed because people dislike GNOME. Your statement does not take in to account the possibility that people just like the other alternatives, and may still like GNOME as well, or feel indifference towards it.
No one is claiming that GNOME has the superior desktop experience. Rather, GNOME has a more opinionated experience, that suits some people, and not others. For some people, it will be superior. For others, they will prefer KDE, XFCE etc.