First of all, I don't care about MLG. It isn't relevant to this debate, at least from my point of view.
Now, regarding the HoF : the reason why I don't like it isn't because people would get butthurt. I couldn't care less, and actually, if someone was to complain about not being included, chances are that it would make me laugh.
No, the real reason is that I'm not a big supporter of this idea is that I like to praise people when they deserve it, not years after. I also don't like the idea to pick a few chosen ones while some other people need as much recognition. But like you said, it's like that in any awards ceremony. That's true, and that's why I'm not a big fan of this kind of thing.
As for the HoF being a testimony of the scene's history, I have to admit it's true. But in my opinion, it does a very poor job describing the past scene. If I were to tell the story of competitive Melee, it would be through quite a few (very) long articles, backed up with a ton of statistics and facts. True, it might not look as sexy as a HoF with 15 names and 5 lignes about each of them, but at least, it would be way more
But don't get me wrong : I'm not a strong opposant of this project. If other people want to do it... that's fine by me, and I'll contribute. But I don't think it's the right thing to do.
Also, if we were to do a Melee HoF... you would need more that 15 addition per year, or do this more than once a year. This isn't Brawl, the competitive scene as been here for a decade. You already mentioned 11 players/TOs from years ago. At this rate, we could only mention a selected few while forgetting many persons who contributed a lot to the community.