Recent site changes have generated more unhappiness than I expected.

I dunno. I'm pretty thrilled with the results. People usually only comment when they have a disagreement. When I write a big research post, almost every single comment is negative, and yet it gets 50 upvotes. So most people may appreciate the changes even if you only hear from critics.

Thanks for all your hard work, Matt! Try not to take the criticism too seriously. People get accustomed to something even when it's suboptimal, and then they complain when it's changed. But they'll get over it.

Also, please actually pay attention to these requests, and don't add stuff that you don't know the community wants without talking about it first. In my experience, site redesigns can easily lead to large amounts of drama over very minor issues. If we're trying to be rationalist we should keep that in mind and proceed cautiously.

— comment by JoshuaZ in the suggestion thread

I suspect much of the reaction is the feeling that many user suggestions and requests were ignored, while other actions were taken that users didn't necessarily ask for or desire.

I've gone through that thread to summarize all of the most popular suggestions. For now, I'm defining "most popular" as having > 10 karma so this list does not become even longer. (If anyone feels I've unfairly or incorrectly summarized a suggestion, please let me know.) Here they are in order, with their status as best as I can tell (Y for implemented, N for not implemented, ? for unsure).

Edit: The list takes up a lot of space when posted, so I'm hosting it here.

The totals are: 8 Y, 33 N, 7 ?. That's not a particularly stellar record. Now, personally I'm glad that some of these didn't get implemented (karma bounties and ... (read more)

A bare fact of this episode is that I'm feeling shellshocked, and have not enjoyed the experience of spending significant time and money trying to make LessWrong better. Unless my brain is built differently than others of my species this experience is likely to lead to spending less on projects like this in the future.

I find it funny that you almost need to apologize for having normal human emotions. Don't worry, I think no one holds this against you.

And if you need something positive to focus on, note that you're receiving positive karma for most of your interactions with the community.

Also let me say that the overall site design seems cleaner and better readable, I perhaps have one or two minor issues but overall you have indeed optimized LW. Since this is my favourite site online, let me give you a heartfelt thanks. :)

I know practically equivalent messages have been relayed by others, but I also know that our brains work in a way that makes a +1 less relevant than reading a new message with the same content.

I think it would've helped if you had made a post about the changes when they were made, with a list of what had been changed and why and a clear statement that you were looking for feedback to modify or reverse changes that didn't work. That post would've been a place for people to give you kudos for all your hard work, and it could have encouraged a discussion that was more constructive and less antagonistic.

People naturally get put off when a site that they're comfortable with is suddenly different, and attention naturally gets drawn to the little annoyances. It can help to have a list of what's been changed to make it all more understandable, a promise that bugs and annoyances can be fixed, and examples of cool/helpful changes that help balance out the annoyances. A lot of that came out eventually in the discussion to the posts about the changes, but you missed your chance to set the tone right from the start and so the discussion had more of the feel of a user revolt rather than seeming like part of the process.

I find it amazing that none of all the extraordinary claims made on this site has ever triggered a similar amount of criticism than an almost completely irrelevant change to the layout.

Any thanks and complaints about the result of these changes aside, I want to unconditionally thank you for the hard work you've obviously put into making LW better. I'd like to help you feel more positive about your efforts: do you have an amazon wishlist? a tip jar? a favorite baked good I can send you? a novelty t-shirt you really want but feels just a bit too expensive?

I wasn't sure of the right place to express it before, but thanks for all of the hard work you and the team have put into the redesign!

I trust the compliments more than the complaints, because there are more likely ways to negatively speak too soon than positive ones. The functional comments are probably of more value. I'll let you know in a week how I feel about the visual aspects, because I don't trust my judgment right when something familiar is changed.

People should also be aware of the relevant My Little Pony episode about design preferences, Suited For Success. Serious business.

I think the mere fact of having unread comments highlighted in green more than makes up for the rest of the arguably worse changes (the old header is the only thing I regret (and frankly who cares, that's textbook bikeshedding), the other small changes are probably improvements).

As a fellow programmer who has to deal with usability and fickle users (though I make games and not websites), I can guess how you feel - it is annoying how people tend to freak out over small details that are obviously small and easy-to-fix bugs (like the cache issue), and weight ... (read more)

The nearby meetups feature is a great idea, but the current implementation creates a new challenge: All regular meetups are now making posts every time they have a meetup. This is more work for them, but more importantly, it's serious clutter on the discussion page.

Possible solutions: 1) Implement a calendar that can handle repeat events. 2) Add an option on the Add New Meetup tab which would allow users to either create a new post (what it does right now) or to link to another url (old post or wiki page). This would at least handle the clutter problem.

Currently, the only thing for me that is close to a dealbreaker is the issue about not being able to delete comments. If that ability is restored, I should be mostly complaint-free for the time being.

One feature that I would like to request, however, is the ability to more easily retrieve old private messages -- perhaps separate inboxes for comments and PMs.

Ooooh, looks like everything I disliked about the update has been fixed (last one sometime in the lest few hours it looks like), so consider any complaints I had withdrawn. This In now officially awesome and you're awesome for making it! ^_^

Thanks for putting in a lot of work and helping make the community better etc. etc.

Edit: Wait, what, now it's back to the bad colour scheme again?!

I feel that the main problem, perhaps the ONLY problem, is not among the ones you listed: The changes were made involuntarily, without any warning. What you should have done instead was somehting like making the changes, but have them as an alternate mode so that you could chose if you wanted to use the new or old design at first. Then, once you had sorted out almost of the issues you could do things like having the new design be the default for new users, changing everyone profile to it but allowing the option to change back, etc. Only once almost everyon... (read more)

First off, let me say thank you for all the work that's gone into the site update by everyone involved! The three changes I like most are the new header design (especially the clear separation between Main and Discussion - the old menu was too cluttered), the nearby meetup section, and the expanding karma bubbles.

I had one question about how the nearby meetup list and Location. Is the meetup list supposed to sort by location somehow? If so, what do I need to put in my location? Thanks!

Something I would really like is for the main site and the "main" button at the top to go to the new posts page, not just the promoted posts. Something only gets promoted every few weeks, and I want to see all the new content, not just the best. I realize that I may be in the minority on this, so I won't mind if you don't implement it because you think it would be ill received.

Also, can the green glow around new comments be extended to posts that contain new comments? I can't always remember how many comments a post had at last glance, and I'd like to see where there are new ones.

Here's my number one comment, and the one thing I'd want to see modified:

• With the current style, the "Upcoming Meetups" change has squeezed down "Recent Comments" and "Recent Posts" to the second page. This is disastrous for my participation in the site -- I expect a drastic reduction in my participation for the mere reason that I can no longer see at a glance if there's a new comment or a new post, that I might want to respond to.

Secondary comments:

• Keep "Vote up" "Vote Down" as icons, but move them n

Feature request: it would be great if retracted comments were initially rendered "folded" like low-scored comments, and had to be explicitly unfolded.