Quick update: we are going to review the Update Train ticket tomorrow in a meeting. We will review the suggested feedback and see if it is something that we will be able to implement before 11.2 (proper) is released. As Kmoore mentioned, you are able to track this ticket
here.
Thank you for this level of transparency. This is what builds trust with the community!
The reason those names have been picked is so that beta and RC user can stay on that train and upgrade right to release. (And subsequent -Ux releases)
While I understand the reasoning behind the naming, I strongly disagree. This favours beta testers (emphasis testers!) over production users, creating confusion with the latter to make it easier for the former. Developers tend to err on the side of overcomplicating things - I know, I work professionally in this exact area.
Keep it simple, especially for the less technical users. Any updates shown in the regular UI should be stable.
Hide all things unstable until the user has explicitly un-hidden them, and agreed to face instabilities. And frankly, if you can't go back to -RELEASE once you've gone -BETA, so be it. In my experience most solutions don't allow you to do this, and for good reason: it's very hard to anticipate what may have been broken during the beta test. -RELEASE to -BETA yes, but don't insist on the other way round. FreeNAS makes it easy enough to export config and import it into a fresh -RELEASE install.