Tips for Surviving Primary Season on Democratic Underground

[EarlG]

This discussion thread was locked by Skinner (a host of the Announcements group).

DU members love to discuss Democratic Party politics, and that discussion is never more passionate than during primary season. Veterans of previous primary seasons will have anticipated that this period of the political calendar would be tough on DU, and are probably not surprised by the overall level of discourse. Newer members may be a bit more shocked at what's going on.

But whether you are a veteran or a new member, you should be aware that the current iteration of our forum software has some useful functions that can dramatically improve your experience if you are getting fed up of primary season. Veterans should note that these functions didn't exist (or had reduced functionality) last time we went through a contested presidential primary.

So here are a few suggestions for anyone who is feeling burned out...

1. Trash the General Discussion: Primaries forum

Go to the General Discussion: Primaries forum and click the "Trash this forum" button found in the navigation bar just below the forum header. You'll be presented with two options:

• "Full trash" removes General Discussion: Primaries threads from the Latest and Greatest pages and removes the forum from the left-hand navigation column and the Forums & Groups page. (You can click here to set General Discussion: Primaries to "full trash" right now.)


• "Hide threads" removes General Discussion: Primaries threads from the Latest and Greatest pages but leaves the navigation links in place. (You can click here to set General Discussion: Primaries to "hide threads" right now.)

[font color="red"]You can undo these actions at any time by visiting your My Account: Trash Can page.[/font]

2. Trash candidate groups

You can use the same procedure outlined above to trash individual candidate groups. If you are looking for a more friendly, supportive atmosphere, here's one way to do it: 1) trash General Discussion: Primaries, 2) trash groups for candidates you don't support, 3) don't trash groups for candidates you do support.

Here are some useful shortcuts to the groups for our current presidential candidates, listed here in alphabetical order:

• Lincoln Chafee: Hide Threads | Full Trash
• Hillary Clinton: Hide Threads | Full Trash
• Martin O'Malley: Hide Threads | Full Trash
• Bernie Sanders: Hide Threads | Full Trash

[font color="red"]You can undo these actions at any time by visiting your My Account: Trash Can page.[/font]

3. Make use of the ignore function

Whether you're trashing forums and groups or not, if there is a specific individual who consistently rubs you the wrong way we recommend that you make use of the ignore function. To ignore someone, either click the "Ignore" button on their profile, or find a post by that member and click the little ignore button in the bar at the top of their post -->

You'll be presented with two options:

• "Block mail" prevents you receiving DU Mail from the member.


• "Full ignore" prevents you receiving DU Mail from the member, and prevents you from seeing any posts by the member.

[font color="red"]You can undo these actions at any time by visiting your My Account: Ignore List page.[/font]

Whether you choose to block mail from another member or put them on full ignore, they will not be informed that you have added them to your ignore list.

Bear in mind that when you are ignoring someone they are not completely gone. They can still reply to your posts, they can serve on Juries for your posts, and you can serve on Juries for their posts. However, you will not see any of their posts, and you won't see any replies to their posts either. This essentially gives the impression that they no longer exist on DU.

A few caveats

As of now, threads from forums that you have trashed and threads by members you are ignoring will still appear on the homepage (we hope to fix this once we have upgraded our servers). And while most threads about the primaries are funneled into the General Discussion: Primaries forum and the candidate groups they can sometimes appear in other forums, so you may find it impossible to completely eradicate them from view (if that's what you were hoping to do).

Finally, please note that all in the information in this post pertains to the Democratic primaries -- if you want to hide threads about the Republican primaries, you'll need to trash the General Discussion forum.

The bottom line is that these functions give you options, just be aware that they aren't completely perfect. But we do highly recommend their use, in whichever combination you prefer, if you feel you need to give your brain a reprieve from discussions of the Democratic primaries.

You have the power to shape your own DU experience!

-- The DU Administrators