That quote is pulled from a sentence discussing eladrin, with the context that the abilities of the eladrin (i.e. teleport) do not fit.
You're deliberately taking my quote completely out of context to try and make a point.
It's not remotely out of context. My point is that if the abilities of the race don't fit, then don't use it! This is a time-honoured GMing technique that I myself discovered around 25 years ago.
If stats are that unimportant, why make an entirely new race for wizard elves? Your argument suggests that eladrin are even more unnecessary as the +2 to Int is irrelevant, and thus the massive retcon to the Forgotten Realms and D&D even more of a mistake.
I imagine the reason for eladrin in the PHB is primarily because the designers thought they would be fun to play. It seems that they must have been right, because after a big playtest and a lot of surveying plus collection of data from DDI they are publishing them again in the 5e DMG.
As to whethr or not the retcon of FR was a mistake, I don't have a view on that. My point is that anyone who didn't like it
could keep using the old canon they did like. And that, if they wanted to keep using elves with a bonus to INT as part of that,
the houserule required to do so is utterly tritival.
House ruling as a way of fixing is a clear example of the Oberoni Fallacy (or Rule-0 Fallacy). Just because I can fix elves (or eladrin) does not make elves or eladrin less broken/ ill-suited/ unoptimal.
Seriously?
I'm just trying to think myself into this situation: I want to play 4e (for whatever reason). And I don't like eladrin as 4e presents them (for whatever reason). And I want to replicate the old wood elf/high elf split (for whatever reason). But it's some sort of
wrongdoing on the part of WotC that
I have to come up with the idea of giving a bonus to INT instead of WIS?
Seriously? I mean, the only person who is going to have the issue you describe is someone
who is already familiar with elves that get a bonus to INT! Yet you're saying it's unreasonable, or a fallacy, to suggest to them that they keep doing what they've been doing up untl now?
In my view, the person who
wants to play canon but
doesn't like the latest canon yet
won't use trivial houserules to stick to the canon s/he likes because
s/he insists on canonising the current ruleset has noone to blame but him-/herself.