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The WP front page is a bad showcase of the WP user experience as it is not an article, almost nobody sees it (as most navigate directly to articles via search results), and the layout is heavily customized outside of what the theme controls. Previewing the theme on an article gives a better contrast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News?useskin=timeless

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Jeez, that’s awful. I’m glad the article’s author lost this battle.

The rejection wasn’t bad faith… someone at Wikimedia happened to have enough taste to say no.

I think it's a great example of the bubble that the average WP editor lives in. For the vast majority of users, that theme is incredibly distracting. But it might be more efficient for the most hardcore editors that rarely actually read articles. And those hardcore editors make up the vast majority of the talk pages discussing themes etc.

Aren't logged in users able to use the themes they like?

Yep, but OP spent some time arguing that this should be the default theme across Wikipedia.

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