Craigslist Redesign? Hiring UI Designer

That pretty much flies in the face of CL's stated intent. It's for humans, transacting wth humans, locally. This is addressed in a few different aspects in the CL TOU: http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use

I agree, but I think some of that might boil down to different priorities, rather than design per se. EBay hasn't slowly turned into the rather annoying mess it is because of incompetent design, but imo mostly because of aggressive monetization, which hands non-negotiable constraints to their designers. Craigslist just doesn't care about monetizing beyond their comfortable income level, so there's less push from management to compromise the design. As a result, it might be possible for them to create a "Web 2.0" looking site without pulling in the bad aspects of other sites, because the bad aspects are due to the aggressive monetization rather than to the Web-2.0-ness.

Who said they want to add those things? The website hasn't been changed in a long time, and it does resemble designs more common several years ago.

I think there are lots of ways an update could worsen craig's list, but there are also a lot of ways an update could make it better.

They won't. Craigslist has to be minimal due to it's culture, massive traffic, and user expectations. So no shiny buttons everywhere or glossy logos.

Things will probably just be re-arranged.

I don't understand. Why would improving the UX necessitate the quality of content going down?

Exactly. Craigslist, like softpanorama or drudgereport, is refreshing in that it doesn't attempt to look like a 19th century circus flyer.

If only the web were rendered more like a generic latex article. No rivers, proper kerning, ligatures, optimal paragraph width, and - in general - respect for the traditional art of typesetting. Instead, the web looks like a menagerie of cereal box art.