I remember when they switched from Oasis to the new design. I was quite upset and it took a long time to get used to. But it was objectively a better format. Over the years, I had honestly forgotten Oasis even existed, and quite liked the new design. But now, all of a sudden without even a single warning, they changed it back. Except they changed it to an inferior version of Oasis. The top bar is extremely crowded and the left bar has essentially nothing. This is such an obvious downgrade that it’s painful.
Old users who remember Oasis and new users who have never seen Oasis both hate this. All the feedback I’ve seen is overwhelmingly negative, with some neutral reactions, and basically no positive feedback. Nobody likes this. Nobody wanted this. And yet, staff won’t listen. Scroll through this blog for a minute and see what I mean:
A wiser user on that thread said this: “Helpful hint to websites: When you make a change and the first question your users ask is "How do we undo this" GO BACK! Do NOT force it on them unless you want to alienate and antagonize your users and that only ends with them leaving your platform for one that actually listens to their users.” They’re right. All Fandom is doing with this change is upsetting users and making them likely to leave.
I would use a script to change it back, but that doesn’t work on discussions, where I spend the majority of my time. This unwieldy design is going to make it much harder for me to edit pages and do my duty as a discussions moderator. Worst of all, Fandom doesn’t even provide an option to return to the old version. That was the first thing I looked for when I saw this change. But no. Apparently that would be too complicated. So, y’know…maybe they can just return to the old design?!
This is honestly infuriating.
