when the community does support the fork, that is a stronger vote of "no confidence" in the original developer.
According to your words, Bytecoin is one of powerfull fork here, on the altcoin subforum.
In case you havent notice Bytecoin has almost 0 community. Half of the posters about bytecoin are paid accounts. And most comments on bytecoin thread are from people that support Monero including me. Volume is close to 0. Hell even duckcoin has bigger volume...
I thought that this is the best proof of our community.
Even I have sended a contribution.