I mentioned this in the other thread, but I think that any massive changes would benefit from either a publicly viewable mockup prior to releasing (or even a new skin to existing content, though that's a bit harder). In my experience UX people tend to think very much along the lines of "this looks great" rather than always considering "this is what people actually do".

I had several long discussions with our UX team in the past explaining that their changes may look pretty but ignored the way users actually use our software. I got several "they shouldn't do that" responses before someone more senior finally explained that that wasn't a valid argument. It sadly got to the point where we wouldn't even bother trying to point out bad UX designs because we didn't want to deal with the arguments. 😛 I even had one long discussion when someone wanted to reduce the number of buttons so made them change context on the fly rather than just adding radio buttons or some other selection mechanism. He eventually realized that the design would not be good for the user, but still maintained that it was cool (which it was - just not user-friendly).

Anyway, if there are any major changes coming down, releasing them in some sort of preview might help alleviate some of the concerns before they're released or even point out things that the users don't like (no matter how great the UX people may think they are). 🙂