User blog comment:Rupert Giles/Global Navigation Update/@comment-5116706-20141207233502

I think the massive navigation bar at the top is just too obstructive, especially with pretty much any theme that isn't white, and unnecessary. I can't think of any user who has claimed difficulty in locating a wiki for a certain topic, either through Google or simply testing out URLs. By searching for essentially any topic with the word "wiki" at the end in Google (or any search engine for that matter) is going to place any Wikia results onto the very first page of results; Wikia has become so widespread and popular, odds are that your search for "Pillow Wiki" didn't bring up any Wikia results because there isn't a pillow wiki on Wikia (yet!). Since global navigation is basically doing what Google does perfectly fine, I see no functional reason to implement it globally, or at least to implement it without an option to switch it off.

On top of this, the old searchbox that was confined to whatever wiki you happened to be on at the time went along with the wiki's theme so fluidly that the new global navigation seems almost like a bright, clean eyesore for any wiki that doesn't use a white theme.