Howdy all. Since the announcement is a little bit vague (as corporate announcements tend to be), I just wanted to hop in and chime in a bit more casually about why the board was closed.
The primary reason for the closure was an attempt to help align all of Fandom's newly acquired brands with the existing community guidelines that they already have for Fandom.com. Political boards on other brands like GameSpot were also shut down as well.
Generally, Fandom attempts to prevent communities being built specifically about politics. You can see an exerpt from here: https://www.fandom.com/community-creation-policy
"Wikis whose main purpose is to represent a political party, advocate for or against a political ideology, or generally opine regarding political issues;"
I originally had some hesitation about this idea when it was first brought up, but to be honest, board 261 was by far the biggest drain on our moderator resources across the whole site, and one of the boards that garnered the most complaints from users. In the end, I do agree that it makes sense not to have a board that specifically caters to one of the most notoriously divisive conversational topics known to man. By removing the board, we are actually helping the mod team as well.
Does this mean that boards like CE are also on the chopping block? Not at all. There are occasional political topics here, but this board is mostly just a hub to discuss anything and everything. We did raise the user level for this board as a temporary measure to prevent flooding from alts during this transitional period and after a few weeks or so, we'll poll the board and see how you all feel about lowering the level back down a bit or if you prefer the newer version.
"Um, let's face it, you'd be better off staying at the Hilton."
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