Like most Farkers, I was surprised to see a very different-looking Fark.
What went wrong?
1. Lack of an explanation
What prompted the Fark crew to re-design the site? While there are sometimes compelling reasons for a site to be re-worked, Fark users weren't given the opportunity to judge the legitimacy of Fark's purposes. Nobody explained anything; the site was simply launched with a note reading "Fark site redesign is now live. Hope nothing breaks, we're all out drinking." Not only does this fail to provide any reason for the re-work, the attempt at humor also indicates that those behind it could care less what happens now that their coding is done - which really gets to point 2.
2. Apparent lack of user-centered purposes
Without knowing why the site was changed, users are left to themselves to figure out why things were made different. One thing seems obvious, though: the site wasn't changed to accommodate user needs or requests. There were very few posts after the launch which indicated that the new site fulfilled a long-missing gap in the old design; instead, users typically noted the features that they missed.
Websites shouldn't be changed just to make them look different. Changes should be made to make the user experience better. Period.
3. Users weren't prepared
Consistency is an incredibly important part of branding, and the reason so many sites (and products, and fast-food chains) work so well. McDonald's menus look the same the world over, and even if they didn't, their content doesn't change from day to day. Fark, on the other hand, requires a greater degree of work on the part of the user to sift through information and find what's important, useful, or interesting.
Despite this, change is inevitable, and so users need to be prepared for what's to come. In the case of Fark, users had not only not been privy to any of the actual changes coming their way, but they were also completely unaware that there were any changes coming their way. Many users simply reloaded the site after being away from it and were thrown into a very different-looking site.
4. Little of the old branding
Related to this, Fark doesn't look like Fark anymore. There are very few vestiges on the new site that remind users they are visiting a site they've known for a long time. Branding changes need to be done very, very carefully as the mark (and look and feel) are an integral part of the product itself.
5. No testing
The overall reaction indicates that Fark users, as a whole, dislike most (if not all) features of the new design. Such a massive shift only happens if new features haven't been seen by anyone but the designers themselves. Even a small sampling of Farkers would have produced some very useful feedback which could have been incorporated into the new design before it went live.
6. Poor performance by the site itself once the redesign was launched
Most users experienced incredibly slow load times after the site was changed. Although the Fark crew attributes this to sheer comment volume, most Farkers seemed not to accept that explanation and instead blamed it on the design itself. Both or either may be true, but the synchonicity of the design and a poorly-performing site did nothing to help Farkers like the change.
7. Poor reaction to user responses
Finally - and perhaps most importantly - the Fark crew did a very poor job of responding to the comments - albeit mostly negative - posted by users. The overall lack of responses made users feel as though they had no say whatsoever in the matter, which simply served to disenfranchise them and began to dispel the notion that Fark was a community in which users mattered. And the few responses that were posted underscored this notion by telling users to simply get over it.
A frequently-repeated phrase went something like this:
"It's Drew's site. He can do whatever he wants."
This is absolutely true, of course. A business owner may not truly have a responsibility to his customers in any sense but an ethical one, but that should be enough to at least consider the user.
And even if not, and if we think of Fark as a business - and it's really impossible not to these days - we need to consider that statement in relationship to how other businesses are run. Companies that want to make money do so by giving customers what they want and responding to their needs, not by forcing seemingly unnecessary changes upon them - especially without adequate testing or preparation.
It is Drew's site.
But it also used to belong to Farkers.