Yes, here is the complete story.  I am running windows version 22623.870.  I don't want to install windows maintenance because two things happened:

1) After installing 22623.875 size of taskbar shrunk to small from medium.  

2) Restored 22623.870.  Taskbar is medium size and icons appear the way I want.

3) Re-ran update to 22623.875, then downloaded stardock's update.  Taskbar is again not medium sized.  I modify somebuttons in Start 11 to see if I can restore the behavior I want.  None of them work and in fact, one change disabled Start 11's start menu entirely.

4)  So, I have again restored to version 22623.870 without the stardock update.  So, I cannot apply any Microsoft maintenance either with or without Stardock patches.  I have deferred Microsoft maintenance for a week.  Let me know how I can have:

medium size taskbar

stardock start menu

and larger taskbar.  I'll try anything but doubt it will be successful as it seems I have tried all options

          Thanks Basj

                                        Norm

It is a pretty shortsided view but i can uninstall Stardock so I can proceed with routine maintenance.  Let me simply say that they and you have a different opinion.

Taskbar issues are same in the Development ring on Microsoft so I came back. Let me try a different question which is not related to a bug.  It might be functionality that people would like.  Let's say that I don't want to add text next to a taskbar icon. is there a way to create an exempt list that behave like it is not enhancing the taskbar for icons/apps that I specify?

There is not.  Right now the options are show text or do not show text.  There is no exclusion list to set say notepad to hide text but explorer to show text.

We can add this to the request list for future consideration however.

With regards to insider builds, unless you have a real reason to use them I would strongly urge you not to use them.  You will experience issues with builds and no sane software dev will offer any technical support for issues which only happen on them.  In fact the advice will be to roll back to release Windows and then let them know if the issue continues to exist.  It is simply too costly to provide support for people using experimental at best versions of Windows.