Surely it's not that hard to see that the majority of people don't come here for freelance discussion, they don't come here for talking about marketing or business. The majority of people (myself included) just come here because it's a hard habit to break, i'm sure there are alot of people like me, who just come here because it's what they've been apart of for so long.

So by changing the structure you may be appealing to new members but you're just going to lose alot of the current ones interest, people do not want to scroll down to see the general chat, news & annoucements by pure logic has to be the first forum. I can understand somewhat on the marketplace being opened up, but really, thousands of people managed fine before, why change it now? All you've done is ruin one of the unique elements this community had (the way the marketplace was designed), that in itself probably attracted quite a few members, believe it or not.

What I really want to know is, is anyone actually tracking the changes? Are you measuring how many posts are made per day based on the previous layout, the new one, because i'd put money that activity will drop with the general chat at the bottom, sure you may get more threads in the marketplace, but what is the good of Talkfreelance without a community? Do you really want this place to be another yaxay? I thought that was what we didn't want?