Yeah, people are like that. We each to feel, each step of the way, that we chose the next step, and the step was forward. But there is a wide range of user skills, and a wide variation in how much of that skill is unconscious muscle memory versus potentially conscious awareness of what the software is doing or could be doing.
When you start thinking of some of your users as the "enemy", rather than as blessings, you're toast.
Let me step back from the precipice here a bit.
John and whomever else is behind the curtain here in Freeper Land run one of the most remarkable, successful web sites and forums in human history. They do more, with less, providing the platform for a level of (usually) healthy interaction, informing and organizing that few other web sites, if any, can touch.
The site is fast, it handles huge loads, a wide variety of people figure out how to use it successfully, they do it on a budget that's astonishingly dirt cheap, and they've been doing it, with high availability, almost non-stop, for over a decade now (did we miss celebrating a ten year anniversary back there?), which is like forever in the life of the internet.
I salute John.
So ... how do handle change.
Well, what Google does, who with their Google.com interface runs an even more popular interface, with a 14.27 gazillion times bigger budget, is to run new fancier interfaces, along side the well known one. They never plan to remove the well known one, and they change it with a delicate touch that mostly avoids forcing anyone to relearn anything, even in the small detail. But alongside, they run fancier interfaces, which those of us who are feeling more adventurous can use, if we like.
Only those who ask for the new interface get it (see further iGoogle.com).
However, I'm not sure if that's an option here. I don't know if FR can and does have the presentation portion of its backend software sufficiently separated from its core data engine and core forum software internals, that we could run two interfaces, one classic (legacy) and one more leading edge, more fluid, more rapidly changing, at the same time.
Now if John could do that, he'd a a coding God that Larry Wall, Linus Torvalds and Ken Thompson would all bow before. But if John is a mere mortal like the rest of us humans, then one cannot expect that he's been able to produce this fine site while preserving a nearly perfect Model-Viewer-Controller separation of internals and presentation that allows for naturally plugging in alternative presentation (aka viewer) modules, along side the existing one, cleanly and efficiently, with little effort. That's simply too much to ask.
So ... well heck I don't know ... change is difficult in such cases.
FR is revolutionary between 1999 and around 2004. Since then its hardly one of the most successful forums in human history. A tad hyperbolic there. In fact, there are blogs more popular than FR. Techcrunch, engadget, macrumors and even Joomla forums is well above FR in success and reach.
FR has had her moments in terms of news and exposing certain documents. That is certain but lets not convince ourselves its the best thing slice bread. Maybe to us, it is. But overall, not even close.
When you start thinking of some of your users as the "enemy", rather than as blessings, you're toast.
Marketers believe the user is the best asset and a blessing. The programmer thinks they are borderline mentally disabled and works up from there. Its the world I live in. I don't mean to offend but when designing and developing a site, you need to first take the user as a moron and design around that. It makes it that much easier for the real user who is more average in usage of the internet.
I think FR is extremely hard to follow and understand for a moron [insert typical DUmmie statement here]. From a usage standpoint, it needs to be made more easily understandable and have a better flow of logic.