Agreed. It's only a matter of time before they get rid of the opt-out of the redesign. When that happens, I'll likely quit. I find the redesign absolutely impossible to use.
It certainly doesn't help that they've apparently adopted the game development definition of a 'beta'. (i.e. an alpha that you roll out to all users.) There are several core features of the existing site which simply haven't been implemented yet - I consider that unacceptable for an all-users beta, especially in a redesign where those features are expected.
Visiting a user page and checking 'top' simply doesn't work, with a note that it will someday. And that's made even worse because the new 'hot' on user pages has some sort of godawful logic that only shows a handful of posts from a given thread. This is painfully apparent with AMAs, where visiting the AMA account and checking all posts is a standard action - after trashing the AMA infrastructure on the business side (the Victoria mess), the same thing is now happening on the tech side.
The new redesign requires every sub to build a new theme just to maintain existing functionality, and is apparently harder to theme for also. I suspect it's an attempt at homogeneity to be more welcoming to new users, but the practical consequence is that sidebars (rules, links, info) have simply vanished. Which means more work for moderators, less info for visitors, and occasionally complete dysfunction for subs that used the sidebar for something important.
And, of course, the redesign is nakedly anti-user in much the same way as the recent TechCrunch one. It's designed to make sponsored-content ads harder to distinguish, sacrifice content space for site features space, and promote time-on-site over user choice and experience.
I retreated to a handful of low-use, well-moderated subs quite a while ago, and with the site changes tarring even those I'll probably give up soon also.
Completely agree, with all of it. I pretty much only use it for a few things that I have interest in, and don't really venture outside of there. Even then, I've tried to limit my posting and frequenting of the site; there are some weeks where the only thing I'll post is the weekly one on a sub I help moderate.
I've even gone to the point of deleting the app on my phone, and, if I have to, I'll open it in mobile browser (and deal with their shit) to check messages/etc in the morning. I need to start trying to wean myself away from it completely, if only to help kill off that online identity.
