In the Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick shares a memorable tale about the introduction of Facebook's news feed.
Members hated it. They repeatedly said so. It was going to destroy Facebook. They were all going to leave.
Some community managers might've decided to change it back. They might have apologised. Facebook didn't.
Why? Because their data showed them that members were interacting more.
I dislike community managers declaring what the community does/doesn't like based upon what a tiny minority of members have stated. Those that are perfectly happy, usually wont say a thing.
It's impossible to summarize the feelings of a community based upon what members have said, you have to see what members do.
Only data yields you the answer. When you make a change, you need to decide what you're going to measure to see if members like it.
