Harry Potter Wiki Voting response

Hey everybody, I would like to comment on the recent vote about allowing individual memes/artwork in their own threads (A.K.A not posting them in the Creativity thread/O.T Post). I recently spoke to Fandom Staff member Brandon Rhea about what exactly the definition of the Discussions feaure is (in case someone doesn't know, Brandon is the Product Manager here at Fandom). He gave me some interesting input about the matter, which I will share with you all. It was found through user research that certain types of content creation is attractive to different users. "What I was personally surprised by in the research results was how even posting anything can be intimidating to people. A lot of people like to read posts and conversations, but actually posting can be scary because a lot of people are afraid that they’ll just be called stupid for expressing an opinion." That was Brandon's response to the research results that they found. It is known that posting can be intimidating for users (especially new users), so having a variety of different posts on the discussion board could make it less stressful for users to post. A lot of the disagreement in the voting post was what the definition of the Discussions feature is. It has been recognized by Staff as a platform where users can express themselves as a fan. While in-depth discussion is important, it cuts off ways for a lot of users to express themselves. Being able to post in-depth posts and posting memes are equal ways for people to express their fandom. Plus, I don't think a lot of new users are quite ready to go into in-depth conversation their first time on the Dboard, no? Putting a restriction against posting these sort of posts will not create an environment where users will want to stay. Also, it's not like memes and artwork can't create a discussion! Even a good piece of artwork or a funny meme can create a good discussion! If the main worry is the Discussion Board being overwhelmed with memes, set limitations on how often users can post them! Create a new category for memes so that users that don't want to see them can unfollow it. Set up guidelines for posting artwork and memes (how often, when, etc), and enforce them! I don't think it's fair for users that aren't as good at posting or not comfortable enough to post to not be able to express themselves. Thanks so much for reading this, and hope this was worth the time writing! Cheers, Dave