I think, that the maemo community will not change THAT much when merging with the (small) moblin community.
The future community will build itself around the new meego devices. We will not only have one device from one manufacturer, like in the past.
We will even have more manufacturers using meego than it was/is the case with symbian.
But that is the long-term-sight..
In short terms I think there would be a lot of confusion, IF Nokia doesn't clear everything up. But that won't be the case.
But assuming that there will be complaints and maybe even anger against the council.
Communication IS THE KEY.
How to "silent" complaints? Take a look at the Open Pandora case.
The Pandora was delayed over a year. I was thinking about getting a Pandora before I even had the N810, that was early 2008!
Why there are no real complaints? There are some, but not really bad ones.
Because the guys from Open Pandora let everyone know what they're doing at the moment! Everyone knows, that they are now testing this, then they have to do that and so on.
Anger comes only if someone feels mistreated or excluded from something important.
My way would be to show as much presence as possible, and let the community know as much as possible, too. Let them take part in decision-taking! May I citate lcuk? "WE are maemo!"
The council exists only to focus the wishes of the community, not to reign over it or something like that. We don't lead, we cooperate.
Now the case, if someone would insult me.
In fact that was the case in the past at least two times here in the maemo community. I've no problem with that. I communicated, that we can speak like grown people (which we are in fact) and talk about the problem. Often it was just a misunderstanding.

Thanks for reading!