It seems your early experience with Linux has greatly helped you understand the intricacies of dependency resolution. For many of the more recent Linux converts, they've not gone through the process of needing to track down dependencies as they're running ./configure && make && make install, so it doesn't come as natural for many of them.

Sure, that might be good for a "desktop", but what about a server or htpc? On my htpc, I have no need for a web browser. And for the web browser, should it be able to support video playback? If so, then you might need ffmpeg and all those dependencies.

Slackware doesn't differentiate between server, workstation, or home computer, so if they were to have a "minimal install", which should they target? It is on the user to make that determination for them.

This is because the user doesn't provide any info. It is impossible to make suggestions on what a minimal system should be if they just say they want a "minimal system". Do they need a GUI? the ability to compile? Do they want multimedia capabilities? Or support a web server?

Like I said, many want to run a "minimal install" to keep the system fast, which the install itself has no bearing on how fast the system is, just what they run.

And there have been several posts where the Slackware community has helped users with limited data get a working minimal system and slowly build it up to what they need (and several forum members offered to send those people a Slackware install DVD or usb drive).

We don't abhor minimal installs. There are many forum regulars that run a partial install and the community has provided a great deal of information on minimal installs over the years. But when users come in extremely uninformed and want to run a "minimal system" without giving any details, then the community is (understandably, in my mind) reluctant to provide them support for that without more details. Those posts usually end with the OP not providing any more details to allow for proper suggestions on how to slim Slackware.

Typically, we will see a user with little to no posts come into the Slackware forum and request information on a minimal install without giving their requirements for a minimal install (they must think there is a magic "minimal install" that works for everyone). The community is quick to jump in and suggest that Slackware recommends a full install and minimal installs are hard to manage on Slackware without an understanding of how dependencies work. Many of these users (based on the lack of info provided in their posts) probably have no understanding of how ldd or readelf works or how to track down what dependencies are missing based on error messages.

As cwizardone mentioned, we also see a lot of posts when people leave things out of the distro and then post for help on their broken install without mentioning they're running a partial installation. We try and diagnose things expecting something else causing the problem only to find they're missing a major component that we didn't expect they'd be missing.

Ultimately, it comes down to the difficult fact that most users (I want to emphasize that I said most, not all) who come in and ask about minimal installs with providing little to no additional information don't typically have the underlying capability of supporting that minimal install on Slackware. The people who have the capability to run partial installs of Slackware (including hunting down missing dependencies when they find broken packages) don't typically need to start asking the questions of how to run minimal installs (but they can get involved in discussions on how minimal they can run the system and what is required for what functionality). The breakages and frustrations in trying to deal with potential missing dependencies when you don't understand how they work and how to determine what can be a massive turnoff of Slackware or Linux itself.

Small correction:
Kernel-huge almost always does need kernel-modules. The difference between huge and generic is that huge contains some modules to boot the system from boot loader to init process. Huge includes some small subset of all the modules in kernel-modules package.

Floppy package is required if you need to use syslinux to install bootloader to FAT filesystem.

You may also try wicd. It's pretty good and lightweight.

Of course it should - most computer users use a web browser as their main use of a computer - be that a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone - social media, video websites, & music websites are their main usage.

Servers are a niche market compared to 'desktop' usage, & yes there should be a base for server installs too, but throwing everything including the 'kitchen sink' onto your disk is way out of line to what is usually wanted these days.

No, I'm perfectly content with using rc.inet1 and wpa_supplicant. My machines are both desktops, not laptops, so I don't need to worry about the "convenience" provided by using a separate program.

If I had a laptop running Slackware and needed to add new networks occasionally, I might consider using NM or wicd, but even then, it's not hard to add an extra entry into /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf using wpa_passphrase.