Hi Ben,
Thank you for your considered response. My sympathies for your situation.
But for the user, any form of unexpected behaviour is a bug
It's a valid bug to the project. We classify them as "User Experience Bugs" and to fix them (and debug them) requires a specific set of UX skills that precious few developers ever learn. For example collecting data from users who use the software interface in a consistent manner.
re. bug reporting: Maybe it's best to have a one-stop shop for all issues,
We do, this location is called `inbox` and I don't think anyone minds if feature requests, user experience problems or other thoughts end up in the inbox. The design is to allow them to be shuttled to the right places. A UX issue may not end up in Inkscape's issue box right away though as regular developers want to see more actionable things.
Best Regards, Martin Owens