I can completely understand that. Maybe I can understand that maybe a frontend redesign is a blocker for new tools. But you have a subreddit who has moderators

I can completely understand that. Maybe I can understand that maybe a frontend redesign is a blocker for new tools. But you have a subreddit who has moderators who consistently organize high quality, low SNR ratio content, and who also depend on the front page to drive a large amount of their traffic. There has to have been a way to seamlessly get the custom tailored /r/popular stuff onto the mainpage without impacting these high content subreddits. I just don't think Reddit really put enough thought into this. Even something sort of hacky like "super mods" who could curate posts onto the front page. In the end, the /r/science mods had cobbled the tools to notice the drop of users (and Reddit staff didn't run enough analytics to gauge the impact of their decision), and the call was made. I don't think Reddit staff either has the numbers of admins or the tools to adequately make informed decisions about the impact of changes they make.