When the TC started office hours it was as a more time-zone-friendly replacement for the weekly meeting.
I do agree with a lot of what you are saying Zane, but I feel I need to call out this statement. The office hours were never meant as a replacement for the weekly meeting. The weekly meeting was supposed to be replaced by more conversations on the ML and, to a lesser degree, by casual conversations throughtout the week on IRC. But the focus was on using the ML so that it was easier for folks in all timezones to be able to follow along and participate in those conversations. The office hours were intended to fill the need of having a time that we would know at least some majority of TC members would be around in case someone needed something. It was not a way to take one meeting hour and turn it into three fragmented ones.