One benefit of the manager is not having to stare at WTM Local waiting for a line. When I flew a sniper boat, I left my fit pasted and ready to X whenever the line came up. I hardly talked in there, just in case I missed the chance to X first. You would get 20 people Xing up in every possible ship type when the FC asked for a single thing. This contributed to fatigue and burnout on both fleet member and FC sides. I spent multiple hours getting poached when slots opened up, because somebody was faster to hit enter than me. The WL manager is intended to prevent this frankly awful experience.
In the new system, I can X-up, then hop on Netflix or do some work until my place is ready. With proper use, pilots not ready to go when their number is called get bumped in favor of those who are ready to go. It is true that this has the side effect of longer lines, as people do not need to suffer the grind of being first to X under the line. Good news on that front, as others have said, is we run more fleets now than ever before, thanks to more numbers. I consider the current iteration already a success, but be assured the FC core is happy to make adjustments as good ideas come in. (a repeating 10 minute captcha sounds like an awful grind to me)
Edit: almost missed this: " Rewarding an AFK play style is just as bad as only picking people with the shiniest fits, let's fix this. " I strongly disagree with the equality suggested here. There is no reward given for being AFK vs waiting to be ready; indeed, if you leave for too long you get dumped.