User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Why Fandom Evolves: A Look Ahead in 2017/@comment-10637-20170111181814/@comment-20644-20170111195225

That feedback is pretty subjective and nonspecific. Have you sent us specific feedback about what you don't like and where these features and changes could improve? That means pointing out specific reasons why you don't like them, and how and why you feel these changes would drive other users away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to dismiss your feedback there by any means, but nonspecific feedback isn't actionable feedback. Feedback from the type of user who is most likely to comment on a Community Central blog is also not fully representative of the entire Fandom userbase, which includes tens of thousands of users and millions upon millions of readers. That's why we don't take action based on petitions. What may look like a lot of people posting on a forum petition only represents a tiny fraction of the overall Fandom userbase.

That feedback is still important, because we want to make sure that we're providing the best user experience for the most amount of people possible, but it's especially important not to fall into the trap of believing that a petition is representative of what the full userbase wants or would enjoy using. That's why, in addition to feedback, we also study the data about how features are used. And when we see the data and feedback together, there is no "mass criticism" of Discussion. There's a product that's been very successful so far, but, based on feedback from highly active users, still has room to grow and improve.

If nothing else, I hope this comment helps to better illustrate how we use feedback. We know we need to do better at actually showing how feedback is used, how and why we made certain decisions based on feedback, and even why we didn't make certain decisions based on feedback. That's something we're going to be doing as part of our more transparent and inclusive product releases moving forward, and I hope you'll be part of that.