He is right, the Foundry Authors who have gone way too far with this have spoiled the reputation of the wider community and dragged it through the mud. It's not helping, constructive things like supporting a UI change and enhanced search params is helping and is something WE CAN ALL GET BEHIND.

If I am curt it is because this is an issue they have known about and have been saying they would address for a long time. And this isn't simply a "something I'd like" thread. The viability of the Foundry is at risk and it could easily end-up being removed entirely if it simply becomes too much of a mess to fix down the road. There are those who would clearly like this to happen; they make a point of dropping by the Foundry forums and telling us as much on a regular basis.

That is a a laughable assertion.

Also as far as i am aware the foundry itself is not guaranteed as a future component of this game. However I seriously doubt anything other than a policy change and something involving Neverwinter will pull the Foundry from STO. Least of all users making grinding missions. If you want me to be totally honest the worst missions on the foundry are the long broken story missions which have been abandoned by their makers.

Do you know anything about game development?

Do you realize how much time it takes to implement features (priority and resource allocation notwithstanding)?

Also, you might want to go outside, punch a tree, yell at the moon -- or whatever you humans do to relieve stress.

The team primarily working on the Foundry is currently working on Neverwinter. That game is supposedly coming out soon. As soon as that game comes out, it's their intention to move over a lot of that code over to Star Trek Online, since they're built on the same engine (though they're quite far apart now, just due to the nature of game development), but it won't be magic. How much, what specifically, I don't know, but for now, this is what we have to go on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pn7iU4EwTc
You can see features, some of which you describe, in there. It'll come when the people who're working on it finish it.
*EDIT* Watching the video again, I really hope they migrate a lot of those features over, not just for the sake of Foundry, but for ground gameplay/missions in general.
*EDIT2* Specifically, look near the end of the video, at around 22:00. You can see a lot of Foundry author features, it looks great.

Where is it stated that they intend to even touch STO's foundry once NW is out of the gate? I see a lot of folks saying this, but I don't know where they got the info from. So, I wanted to ask.

I do feel that an improvement to the search tool would be useful.

It has several categories to search, but there's a few issues with the way it works. Language... there are a few options, but, only for languages that the game was translated into. I've played missions written in Czech and Polish, but there is no way to sort for those.

And as has been mentioned often, sorting "combat simulations" from actual stories would be nice...

It's not really necessary, but it would be nice.

http://youtu.be/FrHyfuxtOcU?t=11m30s
If you listen to the video from the point that I'm linking, they begin to talk about it. This isn't the only case where Stahl has talked about this, but the info is around if you look/listen.

It's probably mostly speculation. I'm not sure about the source myself.

I'm an amateur programmer... If it was a high priority, which it isn't, less than a month.