I know some people take great exception to the thought that a "35-mm" camera frame would be considered medium format, or a smaller than 645 camera frame could be considered "large format", though I doubt seriously if Canon or Phase One would prescribe to that thought.
This website and many others hailed the original "35-mm" 1ds as a close equal to medium format film and later referenced 39 to 60 mpx medium format backs as the equal to 8x10 film so it's not that big of a leap to see the new formats as one size smaller, because in single shot capture devices there is no large format digital camera.
While ability to resolve detail may be the reason that someone moves up a format, the formats themselves have never been about what numerical resolution or dynamic range was achievable. Mentally, MF (or any other format; just staying on topic here) is about a certain class of tools, and in the technical sense, it has only been about the size of the capture area. Increasing resolution in 35mm cameras does not make them MF cameras any more than releasing a new, higher resolution film (which has happened often) does the same.
The only way that 35mm becomes MF is in the artificial sense that most pros (maybe) used to use MF, but they now use 35mm-FF. As long as this forum is the MF forum, it will be about cameras like the Mamiya, Hasselblad, Phase, Leaf, Sinar, and soon, the Leica S2, and not about Canon, Nikon or Sony.
Having said that, seeing 35mm-FF shots here of the caliber that you have been posting doesn't bother me in the slightest. Seeing sub-par 35mm stuff here *would* bother me, though.