I'm sure this is too late to be of any use, and it might be a software limitation, but I really like this layout. It appears more collaborative, effective integrates some convergence at the front and top, organizes topics more or less and so forth.

imho, the current and proposed layouts look very me-too with respect to kos, and also set up and potentially re-ineforce the same sort of weaknesses of kos (authoritarianism, top-down editorial approach, rigorous party-line enforcement via accreditation of views at the front page and so forth) which I know not to be the case here.

Content drives eyeballs, eyeballs drive influence (or ad $, depending on the model) and, well, the next question is who is the audience, which drive tone and content. In my view, you want a general, hopefully underserved audience, as broad as possible. Shoot for mass eyeballs, try to break out of the niche. Community and then beyond community.

Anyway, that's my media analyst's two cents. I confess to not following internet much in my present role and never have covered this part of it, but I am from the "content is king" style and in a multilingual environment, where no one knows all the languages, content creation needs to be distributed rather than centralized.

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill