User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Wiki Modernization Stage Two: Page and Article Headers/@comment-7114405-20170317024647

I'm definitely not a fan of these changes in the slightest, on the basis that they seem both pointless and counterproductive, and here's why:

1. Going under the assumption that 95%+ of wikis have the name of the wiki in their logo (because that's the most logical thing a logo would be for, right?), having the name of the wiki repeated again in text form to the right of the logo just seems incredibly redundant, and by the looks of it, that's a lot of wasted space on something that's redundant.

2. I'm a fan of the old wiki navigation rail and have come to associate it with Wikia wikis in general, which I guess is more of a personal opinion, but it being changed brings me onto my next point...

3. The old wiki navigation rail (usually?) defaults to first showing the link to the Wiki Activity, which you seem to have for whatever reason deemed 'unimportant' and 'confusing to new readers' (implying new readers are easily confused by a very simple concept, because I guess humans are incapable of using their brains in this day and age?); I cannot for the life of me see where you are coming from with this one, the Wiki Activity is IMO the single most important page on any wiki, as it allows editors and readers alike to keep up with the latest thing happening on a wiki, and that's just the start for editors. Editors can use the Wiki Activity to see when vandalism occurs and deal with it as quickly as possible, inform other users on what they are doing wrong with edit summaries, and generally contribute to the current shiny new article to get it up to a wiki's standards. So in summary, removing the Wiki Activity link from being the first thing to show up under the wiki navigation rail offers no benefits to readers and comes as a massive inconvenience to editors.

4. The list of categories at the top of the page is entirely pointless, seeing as (seemingly) only three categories are going to be listed before we get on to the 'plus X more' link; now it would of course have been a mess to list every category when some articles have upwards of 50+ categories on them, but surely at that point you must have realised that only listing a bare minimum amount of categories at the top of the article is pointless, particularly so when the first of those categories is often going to be something obvious like 'Characters' that doesn't really need too much reading into (and is arguably more useful as a hook for bots looking to make mass edits to pages).

Edit:

5. Having the edit and talk buttons away from being above the article workspace and situated above the right rail general serves no purpose other than to be inconvenient; also, I much prefer the rounded look of the current buttons rather that the clearly-ripped-straight-from-Windows-10 look of the new buttons.