A word about the ongoing Democratic presidential primaries

After last night's primary results I think it's safe to say that the shape of the 2016 general election is starting to come into focus. On the Republican side, Donald Trump holds a commanding lead and will likely secure his party's nomination. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton continues to maintain a significant delegate advantage. She has not yet collected the 2,383 delegates necessary to claim the nomination, so technically it is still possible for Sanders to win. But the chances of that happening are exceedingly small, barring some sort of unexpected event that completely changes the fundamentals of the race.

So what does this mean for Democratic Underground?

Given that neither Democratic candidate has collected the necessary delegates to win, and neither candidate has suspended their campaign, it is still primary season on Democratic Underground. Members are free to support the Democratic primary candidate of their choice here on DU while the candidates themselves are still actively campaigning for the nomination.

But we also understand that many DUers -- even as they continue to support their preferred primary candidate -- are starting to turn some of their attention to the general election that is starting to take shape. I know it is something of a cliché to say that this year's election is the most important in a generation, so I'm not going to say that. But I think it goes without saying that this year is unique in that our likely opponent espouses a toxic mixture of unvarnished racism and incitement to violence that many of us had believed (wrongly) was beyond-the-pale for a major party candidate. Given such a repellent choice on the other side -- a candidate that displays outright contempt for many of the core values of this country and this website -- I have no doubt that every DU member will, in time, get past the divisiveness of the Democratic primary and vote for the Democratic nominee no matter who it is. To do otherwise is unthinkable.

I understand that many of you are not ready to think about the general election yet, and that's fine. But to those of you who are starting to think about the need to get past the division and start to think about healing, I think it is important that we begin to tone down the most divisive and over-the-top rhetoric about our primary candidates and their supporters. And in case it's not clear, that goes for both candidates.

For the last four years we've allowed you all, via the Jury system, to set the standards for where you think the line should be drawn at DU, without interference from Admins. The system worked pretty well for a long time, but I think most people would agree that it has been stretched beyond the breaking point during the last few weeks of primary season. I knew there was a risk in sticking with this system in a highly-charged partisan environment, but we decided to place our faith in the members of DU -- believing that most DU members would be able to take off their candidate-supporter hats when serving on juries and make a good-faith effort to be fair to everyone regardless of candidate. I do not believe my faith was misplaced, but in hindsight I think that it was very difficult for individual jurors to hold the line against the worst-of-the-worst when it felt like standards everywhere on the site were in freefall. And let's be honest: Some of you have been serving on juries in a nakedly partisan fashion.

With this in mind we have been working on some significant changes to the Jury System which we think you will approve of -- I'm not going to go into the details because we're still working on it. Let's just say the focus is on reducing drama, providing better guidance for jurors, and setting clearer standards that better lay out our expectations for what Democratic Underground should be. Unfortunately these changes are still a couple of weeks to a couple of months away from being ready -- at which point the primary race should be pretty much over. Until then, we are going to implement some short-term changes to get us through primary season.

The short-term changes

We still believe that the vast majority of DU members are perfectly capable of participating in a productive way, and serving on juries in a non-partisan way. But given the pervasively negative tone of discussions here, we think it would be wise to provide a greater incentive for people to do so. Going forward if we see anyone voting to leave the worst-of-the-worst posts, or voting in a nakedly partisan fashion to hide posts which are clearly legitimate, then we will remove that person's ability to serve on juries. (We are not going to provide any notification to members who lose their jury privileges, because under the messed-up values of primary season we think many of you would see it as some kind of badge of honor.)

So, please, do the right thing when serving and let's clean this place up a bit.

We've also decided to try removing the current "five hides and you're out" restriction, mainly because we suspect that members would be more likely to vote to hide bad behavior if they didn't feel like one of their friends might get canned over it. So while members can still be flagged for review for getting posts hidden too quickly, there's no more five-hide suspension. And anyone who is currently suspended for getting five hides is able to post again as of now. We reserve the right to change this decision if it seems like it's having the opposite effect to what was intended.

And also we are not going to feature discussion threads on the DU homepage if they are posted in the General Discussion: Primaries forum, or in either of the two primary candidate supporters' groups. We are no longer interested in featuring the most divisive content on the front page of this website.

And so on to the part I'm sure you're all really interested in...

Who are we purging?

Nobody. However, if we see anyone puffing up Trump they will have to go do it someplace else.

tl;dr

General election season is on the horizon but the race is not over. Primary season continues. Nobody is getting purged unless they're Trump-humping. In an effort to improve the level of discourse we're going to remove Jurors who make terrible decisions (either voting to leave the worst-of-the-worst posts, or voting to hide clearly innocuous posts).

We'll be back with more news when we have some. In the meantime, let's all enjoy the fact that 2016 is shaping up to be a big year for progressives and a car wreck for conservatives.

PS. Fuck Donald Trump.