No RfC was conducted. These changes were made on the basis of an A/B test which showed that they likely improved the ability of users to navigate to sister projects. By performing tests, we can speak with confidence about what effect our changes have. A report was published on the test; I'd encourage you to read it and give us any comments you have.

The Discovery Department has no plans to perform consultations for every change we make. We use testing and data to guide our decisions. With large changes, we may perform consultations to also guide us, but this was not a large change at all. As the report linked above notes, very few users interact with these UI elements on this page; of the 22,500 recorded sessions in the test, only 45 clicks on the sister project links were registered. This was enough for the statistical test, but it shows you the magnitude of the engagement here.

The portal repository continues to have volunteer contributions to it, although there are fewer now as the team handles many things such as updating the statistics. If volunteers are daunted by the prospect of using git and gerrit, Discovery would be happy to offer training so that they can continue to contribute.

Dan