I'm reminded of the Gizmodo redesign. The new site was terrible for readability, destroyed the comment system, and the regular commenters all screamed to high heaven about it.
Gizmodo said they were listening and implementing fixes for the issues, but it would take time, give them two months. Two months passed, nothing changed. Anyone who broached the subject was either outright banned, or shouted down and personally insulted by the editors. The lack of fixes was justified by saying "page impressions are higher than ever", so that must mean the redesign was great. But meanwhile, the long time core of commenters all slowly dribbled away from the site.
That giant pile of bullshit made me leave Gizmodo and never go back. I'm hoping Slashdot doesn't do the same thing with this redesign.
...basically what I'm saying to you, Slashdot, is don't try to fix things based on the complaints and then decide you've gotten close enough and push ahead anyway. If you can't actually get the new features to work correctly without breaking the beloved functionality of the site, then ABANDON THE UPDATE. You're better off losing the work you've put into the redesign than losing the core of your userbase.