How do you know? Is there usability research to support this claim? Probably not, since practically no one does actual usability testing anymore. Product managers just slap something together and then start A/B testing to fudge the narrow metrics that they need for their performance reviews.

Ok, things get harder when we talk about shopping carts, logins, and other details, but even there not all good flows have to look the same in literally every way in order to be usable.

At least CNN still has lite.cnn.com as a low-fat alternative. (Slightly too slim, otherwise everyone would use it…)

I weep often because I can see that people are making mistakes that make software less useable because they are either ignorant or arrogant and fail to uphold the guidelines that have been worked out over three decades of blood, sweat and tears.

Consistency is nice but it should never ever be done at the cost of any other features.