User blog comment:Sannse/Your First Look at the New Wikia/@comment-2056465-20100818021932/@comment-761251-20100819113151

Wanted: dialogue and clear advantages
Sannse, reading and listening is not enough. The idea of a dialog is to tell the people whom you are listening to what you have understood, so that any misunderstanding can be cleared up and controversies nipped in the bud.

The only response I've seen that I would qualify at an earnest attempt at a dialog is Sarah's, and even it fails to indicate that you have even noticed the foremost problem that has been raised in these problems: the transition from Monaco to UnnamedNewSkin.

The skin change will cost all of the wikis a lot in terms of retraining editors and users to the new interface, and tranferring the wiki's custom styles to the new skin. To make us buy in, I'd expect you to explain how the new skin offers clear advantages to our editors, our readers, and, if you're really honest and open, to Wikia support staff and Wikia marketing. You have fallen far short of this; mainly you've given us a new "look", and since most of us invested heavily in our present look, it's no wonder this announcement is received in terms of cost instead of benefits.

Btw, you could have stated on your initial blog post (this one) which of the features visible on the screenshots are already available on the new Wikianswers skin; it would probably have avoided some of the confusion.

Side note: is there an easy way to track whether I've received a comment? Unlike a talkpage, the blog comments have no table of contents, so the only way to find a comment and any replies seems to be to load the blog page (with useskin=monaco), allow "all comments" to load, and then use the browser to search for it. On a talkpage, I'd click on "my" topic in the TOC (and that works in monobook as well). This makes comments really unsuited for following any kind of discussion. The lack of a "preview" function and the propensity for important comments to drop from sight quickly doesn't help, either.

-- ◄mendel► 11:31, August 19, 2010 (UTC)

Note: This blog comment is duplicated on Forum:Your First Look at the New Wikia (discussion); feel free to reply there.