Spot. On. This is why I haven’t deployed and mucked neck-deep in Discourse yet. I really want to use Discourse, but right now I feel that I am unable to make any subtle changes I need without having a problem down the line if I need to update my server’s instance.
The UI, as is, is great. I know @codinghorror already mentioned that the default theme needs to be perfect since it’s going to be the only theme for a lot of users. I also have seen that the devs are very passionate about some aspects of the ui and that changing them in the core is out of the question.
While yes, the Minimal Discourse edits proved a good point, I truly think only a few elements need to be removed. I specifically speak of the stars and the 5-avatar line in the topic listings. Everything else I think should stay and I think my little mock up from @sam’s initial screenshot with a bit of minor tweaking should replace that 5-avatar bar in each topic listing entry.. Maybe others might think differently about these opinions but as it is, there’s plenty of Discourse instances live on the net and I haven’t seen one instance where any other drastic changes were made that would suggest a certain ui feature is probably best to apply to core. The stars is one example of this. No one used the feature and many hid the stars with CSS. That’s been established.
I can also see that technical debt is trying to be avoided by making sure the default UI is solid. But I think this might be a case of paying too much attention to the proverbial bike shed. I experience this in traditional art as “knowing when to stop”. You keep looking at something on your drawing or painting and then go “well, damn, I see this mistake here…” and you keep doing that and picking out new things to change that were trivial in the long run. The original artwork becomes overworked and ruined. One could say the removal of the likes from the topic listings is one example of this.
As @tonninseteli said, this is now a case of personal tastes which can easily be solved by taking this final default ui and making it customizable. In fact, I can count on the latest topic listing a nice sizable sample of discussions that would be completely moot if easier theme/ui customization was available. Even some of my own threads are ui-related and could be solved with easier ui editing capabilities.
Any bugs in the existing ui elements should of course be handled. That I am not contesting.
Any kind of suggestions to cosmetically change the current ui that are not related to serious bugs should probably be deferred until more ui customization options are available.
I do wish to say I am grateful for all the dedication and determination from the devs and contributors and bug testers.