Speaking as the OP of the Cookbook Index, I have to say that I agree with @JackJourneyman.
The layout of the Index was originally based on “Help us to help you” - partly as a joke. In hindsight it wasn’t a good choice - they’re different animals.
“Help us to help you” is rarely edited. It has short, static sections with very few bullet points, so you don’t get the wall of text effect. The Index, by its very nature, has to be more flexible because people are adding to it all the time. It will need to be reordered occasionally - the numbered paragraphs make this quite difficult and I believe links to sections can also be a problem if the order is changed.
“Help us to help you” was posted in 2019. HA has grown considerably in six years and there are many more less-technical users than there used to be - people who may not often venture into forums like this. Visual expectations have changed, so that nowadays the long list of unordered sections and bullet points looks muddled and dated.
Whether we like it or not, it’s a fact of (online) life that people will use and trust a resource less if it looks uncared for, and the point of the Cookbook is that people should use it. It’s a resource not a repository.
Personally I think the suggested layout looks fresh and managed, particularly with the links in bold. Less sure about the shading of alternate sections. Perhaps we could see an example of the collapsing sections suggested by @parautenbach?
I have to say that the small number of comments on the suggested layout is disappointing. I make it two likes, plus one strongly anti comment and one cautiously pro. But hey, that’s life. Hundreds of people appear to be using the cookbook, so it’s worth persevering with.
Oh, and @Sir_Goodenough… “I cringed when I saw the changes” is not helpful.