Thank you for your thoughts regarding your use of GitLab CI. As UX Designer at the gitlab CI team I can say that in the upcoming release there will be a focus on making the system more robust and fixing bugs. Stability and dependability are certainly a priority and are increasingly so. It's about finding the right balance between focussing our scope and broadening it.
My last note is on your mention of the growing issue tracker. The issue tracker is not only about defining bugs and problems, but also about idea exploration. To my knowledge the more GitLab will be known, the more it will grow. It is everyones best interest to let it flourish, but in an organised way. We are hard at work in that area as well! For example, we have dedicated Issue Triage Specialists which keep track and answer a lot of the newly created ones.
To join the discussion see: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/26348#note_23... or https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18844#note_23...