The problem of re-designing something as popular Wikipedia (especially something useful that has not changed in 10 years!) is that regardless of the result (i.e. better or worse), you will face _fierce_ opposition. Humans are very sensitive to anything that changes their mental model of how they think something should work.
Think about radically updating some of these to see what I mean:
- Facebook Newsfeed
- HNs homepage
- Vim interface
- Google Search Page
- Craigslist homepage
- Your favorite web mail client
- Your favorite Smartphone main screen
- Reddit homepage
You can come up with the most amazing forward-thinking improvement, and somebody without a doubt will send you so much hate that you'll think it is that person's only goal to wipe out your family line.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, it just means that we have to be aware of that section of the population and come up with a strategy that either does 1) a slow migration for the people with old mental model, 2) provides an alternative "classic" view, or 3) completely ignores that section of the population since they may represent a very small minority. I tend to go for 1,2,3 in that order, but of course this can vary differently depending on the project.
Nice job with the re-design by the way :)