I'm sure jin worked hard on this design, but I'm afraid I'm one of those who preferred the original design. I'm an old-school engineer, and any aspect of design that detracts from readability and usability is, IMNSHO, a loss.

Rather than just saying, "let's go back," let me get specific:

1. I find the text in the new design fundamentally harder to read. After admiring the design for about the first .5 seconds, readability is everything to me. This site (and all of the related Q&A sites) are all about text, text, and more text. If the site is hard on the eyes ... I'm gone.
2. The highlighted areas (number of answers, etc.) don't draw the eye. They look pale and washed out to me. I find myself working harder to find things on the page when it should have been a simple scan of the eye.
3. I don't like big headers. They are a waste of real estate -- above-the-fold or otherwise.
4. The angle brackets around the tags just don't work for me. I'm not too wild about the { }, either. These aren't HTML tags, they are concept tags in a Q&A site. I shouldn't have to think for an instant about what I'm looking at.
5. The one thing I find easier to use in the new design is the "Post Your Answer" button. It stands out much more clearly than in the SO design, where it almost looks like a decorative box of some sort. Here, by God, it's a button. In fact, it's about the strongest visual element in the whole design.

Speaking for myself, I will take clunky-but-usable over elegant-but-tiring-to-use every time.

Assuming that the current look has been anointed as the design, is there any chance of getting an alternate design? I don't know the implementation specifics, but I'm assuming it would be a simple matter of having a preference and a different stylesheet. Hell, I'm even willing to take a copy of the original stylesheet and set up FF (maybe using GreaseMonkey) to substitue it on WPSE. Yes, I feel that strongly about it.

I'm sure jin worked hard on this design, but I'm afraid I'm one of those who preferred the original design. I'm an old-school engineer, and any aspect of design that detracts from readability and usability is, IMNSHO, a loss.

Rather than just saying, "let's go back," let me get specific:

1. I find the text in the new design fundamentally harder to read. After admiring the design for about the first .5 seconds, readability is everything to me. This site (and all of the related Q&A sites) are all about text, text, and more text. If the site is hard on the eyes ... I'm gone.
2. The highlighted areas (number of answers, etc.) don't draw the eye. They look pale and washed out to me. I find myself working harder to find things on the page when it should have been a simple scan of the eye.
3. I don't like big headers. They are a waste of real estate -- above-the-fold or otherwise.
4. The angle brackets around the tags just don't work for me. I'm not too wild about the { }, either. These aren't HTML tags, they are concept tags in a Q&A site. I shouldn't have to think for an instant about what I'm looking at.
5. The one thing I find easier to use in the new design is the "Post Your Answer" button. It stands out much more clearly than in the SO design, where it almost looks like a decorative box of some sort. Here, by God, it's a button. In fact, it's about the strongest visual element in the whole design.

Speaking for myself, I will take clunky-but-usable over elegant-but-tiring-to-use every time.

Assuming that the current look has been anointed as the design, is there any chance of getting an alternate design? I don't know the implementation specifics, but I'm assuming it would be a simple matter of having a preference and a different stylesheet. Hell, I'm even willing to take a copy of the original stylesheet and set up FF (maybe using GreaseMonkey) to substitue it on WPSE. Yes, I feel that strongly about it.

Update: Seek and ye shall find. I've just discovered the Stylish plugin for FF. Basically, it does for styles what GM does for scripts. In other words, it appears to do exactly what I want. If I could get a copy of the old stylesheet CSS I'll be fine and just go away.