This has just surfaced on my radar, so apologies for late vote - appreciate it is way too late to influence the decision.
FWIW I'm in favour of retaining comments - I find 80% of them very useful, 15% entertaining, and 5% inappropriate or a waste of time.
I like the old layout, but am certainly happy to see how I get on with the new
It did lead me to examine my own approach to the FS section of the forum
I found that I always suggest to newbies that they look here before anywhere else when considering a purchase because generally both the fairness of the pricing and the reputation of the seller are supported by the community - for example the number of positive comments about ChrisB would make any newbie confident in buying a game off him, whilst the "rants" of a certain other seller would enable a newbie buyer to appreciate the level of hassle they might experience if buying from him. I think it is very helpful for newbies (and the rest of us) to easily see the level of discussion that goes on.
However, when selling I hardly ever use the forum.
That's partly because I'm more frequently selling EM games which seem to be disparaged and undervalued here, but also because Ebay provides the best answer of what a game is actually worth - more than once I've listed games there recently which I would have been told were overvalued (or ignored) had I'd posted them here (or had Courtney commenting EM games were too difficult for people to maintain) but have gone on to have people fighting on Ebay to pay me far more than I'd expected.
The last time I listed an EM game on here I don't think I had a single enquiry (and it was not overvalued)
More than that, the last three machines I sold on Ebay were to newbies (who would probably never even have discovered the forum), and two of them have already been back to me asking if they can buy another game off me - one of whom (being in the South) I have directed to Flip Out and to another forum member.
To be fair, if I was selling a £5k machine my response would have been different as I'd want to be comfortable as far as possible with the buyer, and I would be more likely to achieve that here - but games I sell in the main go for £0.5k - £2k, with anything more expensive usually going to someone who has already asked me directly to buy it.