It does say on the top right that this is a beta site, so it's probably a weeee bit early to be making comments about "the new direction" and all that.
I'd say it's exactly the opposite: Early on is exactly when comments about "the new direction" can most reasonably be expected to have an effect, assuming anyone is listening/reading.
Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers ... so it's way too late to have input to the new direction, the new direction is at beta stage set in stone unless the update is scrapped.
> Well beta means feature complete and considered ready to ship excepting as yet unspotted last minute bugs from testers
No, that's a release candidate. A beta is considered feature complete, but potentially not, and almost definitely somewhat buggy and/or non-performant. It's also often not undergone any major form of usability testing, and will often need to be modified to incorporate the results of that.
On top of what the others said, it requires pointing out that you go to www.archive.org and get the new page. It's shipped. It is the public face now. You don't get to hide behind any sort of pre-release label when you've already made it the default in place of a prior working model.
If you go to the site cold, you do not get the new site. You get the old site. If, however, you've chosen to look at the new site, a cookie is set so you are looking at the new site. If you click on "exit beta" in the corner, it will go back to the old site and the old site after that.
Please, please, pretty please keep the old site around in some form. It would be the irony of ironies if the archive would no longer be available in its old form.
Websites should not make changes to a user's settings based simply on a GET against an URL, because the user can click the URL from a random stranger not knowing it would have that effect -- as I did.
Aside from being a poor user experience, what has happened here is someone has deliberately coded a security vulnerability. Granted the impact here is basically trivial, but it's still a pretty classic no-no, and should have immediately set off flashing lights and klaxons in any security-conscious developer's mind.
While I, sadly, am not at all surprised to hear that yet another group of developers treats security and user experience flippantly. I'm rather starting to regret defending you and lending resources to the twitpic grab.
