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Interface changes annoy people, because people are creatures of habit.[citation needed] That annoyance is usually temporary, because people get used to change, especially when it's a change for the better. In addition, editor churn means that new people joining after the change never saw the old way, and don't need to adapt, so over time there's a demographic trend to acceptance as well.
To minimise pain, any interface change should be one of the following, and may progress through this list:
- small enough that nobody notices or complains,
- small enough that grumblings don't lead to a "we won't stand for this" snowball of outrage,
- opt-in,
- opt-in for existing users, opt-out for new users,
- easily opt-out for all users,
- important enough to impose despite pissing people off.
It's worth observing of course that this list doesn't apply in isolation; it depends on how much prior discussion and testing the interface change had. Given good testing and community collaboration in design for something that's clearly an improvement, even an imposed change that annoys quite a few people will eventually be accepted.
Most importantly, changes that have not been communicated enough are more likely to be considered by someone a "sudden error" or something that was changed without notification or necessary consensus and can therefore changed without consideration, leading to on-wiki wheel wars or other disruptive chain reactions that can (socially) kill even the (technically) best change ever.
Transitions can sometimes be smoothed in various ways, such as by using new interface elements for new features, so people get used to them, and then eventually getting rid of the old interface element for existing features (migrating to the new) some time later, when people are already well used to the new. Other methods include introducing elements as opt-in, then moving to opt-out, before (if necessary) removing the opt-out option.