People want generics because they think every language should have generics.
What they don't know is the exact cases where the lack of generics causes a real-world problem for them. This is what the developers are requesting at the moment, in order to possibly bring generics to Go 2.
Every statically-typed language needs generics to allow a function to be used with more than one type. Otherwise you throw away most of the type info and end up with the same problems dynamically-typed languages have.
This is exactly my feeling. I don't want generics if I have to pay anything for them in build time, or if it limits go/ast or go/types. A lack of generics has been a pain point a couple of times in my current project (beyond what very simple code generators can provide), but crazy fast build times have been a massive benefit.
Imagine how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there will be if Go 2 delivers generics but with triple the build time and +50% binary size... if you thought the minority was vocal now, wait til you see that!