Where have you been all these months? (Hint: I'm only kidding, I know she's just joined the company).
Just the mere fact you take things to the blog, and put up a summary here is basically priceless! Simple things can make such a big difference! Thank you very much, and please continue with that approach!
Yet, let me say this:
We are making fundamental changes to how our close question system works so that it’s a friendlier experience and more educational for post authors, while making it easier to edit and reopen closed questions, and reduce the burden on curators.
Please consider to not only announce fundamental changes to be coming ...
Instead outline/draft them here before spending a lot of resources developing them. An agile mindset and development model should include user feedback as early as possible. If you consider the users to be true stakeholders, then act accordingly.
Your proposal sounds like a large waterfall, as if you design all these features behind closed doors, to then be surprised in case they miss the point, and users are unhappy about the result, and more importantly: the fact that they weren't consulted upfront.
So: I very much appreciate that you keep us updated with a relatively detailed timeline. But as said: announcements alone aren't what will make the difference in the long run. It is also about working together. And changing essential elements of the Q/A "technology" is something that many users here will consider to be "at the heart of everything". So please include us on that path.
That doesn't mean that each single detail needs to go through a lengthy MSE/MSO discussion. But writing up an outline for each major change (that could for example include the work that you already spent on evaluating options) and have that up for feedback for a few days would surely benefit the product that you are working on and the relationship between company and community.
