To the /. staff creating this new "beta" project, and anybody else concerned with the change:
You need to watch this talk from NOTACON 8 by Joe Peacock of fark.com. It is an amazing pice of introspection about how they seriously pissed off their users with a new design, - costing them most of their readership (aka "income").
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
The issue is one of "buy-in", and how it doesn't matter if a change is actually objectively "better" - the problem is that you should never surprise your users. WIth any social "hang out spot", people are going there more because they are used to it and just want to "hang out" in a familiar place.
Even if a change is a true improvement (which is rare, as most changes are subjective anyway), forcing ANY big change is disruptive.
As an example, imaging you went to your favorite resturant, expecting to get that cool sandwitch that you order every time you go there. One day, you show up, and they've changed the wallpaper, re-arranged the tables, and worst of all, the entire sandwitch section of the menu has been replaced with gourmet pasta dishes.
Maybe you like pasta. Maybe it actually would be a higher quality meal. Maybe re-arranging the tables allws them to fit more people in so you don't have to wait when there is a crowd. Unfortuately, none of that matters - at a base emotional level, you're still angry because you weren't able to get that sandwitch you were hoping for.
There are ways to introduce changes: add them picemeal, opt-in. That way, people can warm up to the new features on their own time. The talk examines these methods in more detail.
So i implore the /. staff to watch that talk and listen to its lessons - and warnings, because neither a literal nor figurative "Youll get over it" is the correct way of handling this situation.