The old Daily Kos was so comfortable I felt like I was entering a coffeehouse full of lots of interesting conversations amongst real people. The redesign feels cold and sterile, like the corporate newsblurbs that appear before the comments. I loved the quirky orange curlicue, the sig lines, the page crammed with lots of interesting sounding diaries, the weird titles people gave their comments, the font was friendly as opposed to cool. I could eavesdrop on a conversation by previewing a diary before I committed to really sitting down at the table to listen. I came here and I lingered due to all these and many other factors.
Now I feel like I just want to leave the site. It feels cold and distant. It is an emotional reaction to all theses various changes. It happened at Crosscut when they redesigned that site — all clean and crisp with lots of white space as opposed to a page brimming with interesting sounding articles to choose from. I have spend much less time reading at that site over the past few months, not consciously out of protest, but out of being subtly put off by it. I fear the same will happen here as well.
Do we want to be a comfortable place to spend a lot of time, or just visually slick and cool looking?