I am a frequent user of Fandom's Special:Contact feature, as I often need to ask Fandom staffers to help me with closing wikis, looking into obscure points of the ToU that are being violated or may cause trouble, and the like. Up until now, I've been completely satisfied with Fandom's Special:Contact board and have never wanted anything more from it.
Until now.
Upon trying to access the new Special:Contact board, I found the request submission button tucked away in light text that's hard to read against the white background, with most of the page dedicated to showing users how to solve problems that most users would probably know how to solve long before they'd have the slightest clue that Community Central even exists (much less know that the request submission button exists). Furthermore, the request submission button now requires users to select an option from a list of likely issues (discouraging users from picking any unlikely issues such as mine), then fill out a form that requires a ton of information that Fandom's website should already know from looking at the account that's logged into the site and filling out the form (username, email address, etc.) This climaxed with a CAPTCHA that was impossible for me to fill out, forcing me to find their email address from a past correspondence and use that. Less-resourceful users might have given up hope, though.
As a matter of fact, it seems as though that's what this board is designed for: to discourage users from sending feedback and making requests. However, the new Community Contract asks that we hold Fandom accountable for its changes and tell its team when they're not living up to their commitments. If we can't even send a form directly to Fandom (as opposed to posting somewhere like here where they're likely as not to even see us), that breaks the system they ask of us: How are we to tell them when they're not living up to their commitments if they refuse to live up to the commitment of letting us tell them so?
If we could have the old support board back, it would be far easier to contact Fandom. Sure, that would allow a few bots and vandals to abuse the site, but it would re-open the door to helpful users submitting helpful feedback and let Fandom do what they want in letting them do what we want (which appears to now be something that they want). As to the harmful abuse of the service, I would personally volunteer to take on some of the workload of trying to flag abusive comments and even assist a bit in solving their problems if it would let people use the service again and help this site (and I wouldn't be surprised if some other users would feel the same).
Please give us back the old support board so we can help the site again, Fandom. We're not all trolls, and those of us who aren't are valuable.
