User blog comment:Susanolivia/Fixed Width, Sidebar, and the Removal of Monaco/@comment-60868-20101001040106

The reason people like Monaco is because of the ability and ways in which it can be changed. It gave people the freedom to do what they wanted to to their site. It made people that were simple editors into website gurus and allowed people to make their site the way that they wanted to. The problem that people have, truthfully, is not in the fact that you have the new skin or that "change is coming". The problem that editors mainly have is that the freedom they had and have become so used to is now going away (along with content space... which made no sense since this IS 99% of the site's purpose.) This reaction is what happens when you give people some freedom to do what they want and then pull in the reins while taking stuff away. Yes, there will still be a Wikia after this and people will probably like the look of the new skin, but the freedom is being taken away and that's what people are so upset about.

If you REALLY want to "appease the masses" you would offer up some changes that can be made or manipulated to the content or at least give up new products that can be added with this changeover. White-space is a black-eye for a wiki or any site and things that can either fill up that white-space (since you are not allowing us to via css) would make about 60% of the complaints stop. Allowing the users to code around other things or extend content space to the left/right would stop another 25%. The remaining people would be ticked off and probably argue anyway since it is change.

The rest of the issue people are having is that this is coming down (and believe me, I even feel this way) with a feeling of let's rush this out so we can fix things, but with a lack of a true goal or plan. That feeling, for me as well as the thousands of others that have commented, is the scary thing. If I felt like I knew what was really going on or at least felt that WIKIA knew what was really going on or being impacted by this, I would feel more confident in the change. While your blog above is probably the most truthful one so far, I think that you HAVING to put it up makes this and the blog simply feel forced. I hope Wikia is taking these comments to the table, as it seems you are beginning to since you posted this blog. Keep in mind that there will be MANY smaller wikis that will suffer due to the change since they probably have no idea it is even happening still. Just make sure to understand what I put above and PLEASE have support and staff to help out and answer questions and we will all adjust to the change a little smoother. Thanks for allowing me to post this (sorry so long).