I know what you mean grazr, I really don't want to post my lengthy views because I know there will be someone who disagrees or misinterprets or takes it too strictly. It hasn't been closed because there is a lack of extremisnt moderation on this site, whilst that might let the odd OTT thread though its not a bad thing because there hasn't really been much need for moderation here we seem to self moderate quite well.
So I'd like to calm this thread down and get back to the original topic: having thought about it a bit more, I don't really think there has been a 'surge' of gimmick maps, more like a steady flow that has been increasing steadily (along with the amount of non gimmick maps) I don't really see gimmick maps as a problem until it comes to getting your own non-gimmick map on servers, if they are all busy running orange_x or mario cart then you'll be kinda annoyed they are running that nonsence rather than your own quality map. but as far as playing tf2 goes, if a server changes from a quality map like cp_vertigo to a map you don't like then just change server.