yeah, I don't know what the thought process was behind "let's use an issue tracking system as if it was a forum soliciting highly controversial feedback -- what could go wrong?"
with extra bonus points of "you know what has great UX? the gitlab issue page!"
Redesign is hard because there always users that like the current/old design. For me the new sidebar looks nice and cleaner (I use it on gitlab.com for 3 weeks now).