A new refresh button was added to the wi-fi panel, as part of bug 789869.

Since it is permanently visible, and there's no feedback when scanning is taking place, it leads the user to think that they have to click it whenever they want to scan. This isn't good in terms of helping the user, and leads to a kind of intensive micro-management interaction that we generally try to avoid in GNOME.

In my testing, pressing the the button had no visible effect - it stayed raised and there was no indication that scanning was taking place

You could provide feedback when scanning is taking place, but then you end up in a whack a mole situation, with the user constantly having to monitor the state of the panel in order to hit the button when scanning stops.

From the original bug, it isn't entirely clear why the button is needed. I wish there had been some design review before the change was landed.