because it's redundant with the site logo sitting just a few pixels away from where a "Home" link would be, and it's a link that most people don't need to see at the front of the location trail (that's our internal name for the list of horizontal links at the top of the page, btw).
I think perhaps this is an issue which affects different people differently.
Some current users may be temporarily unsure of how to reach the home page. That's because they're used to clicking the Home link which isn't there any more. With it gone, they think the home page has disappeared, and they don't consider that there might be another way to get there. However, a number of people who have had this issue have simply asked how to get to the home page, and now they know how to do it. So the issue is cleared up for all those people.
New visitors, however, are not going to miss a link which they didn't even know was there to start with. They should intuitively know that they can get to https://www.democraticunderground.com by clicking the site's logo, because that is completely normal internet navigation behavior.
And this may sound odd, but I don't consider the home page to be the most important page on the site anyway. I don't mean that I don't consider it important -- it obviously is important. But to me the home page is, and always has been, a place to get a taste of the different things that are going on at DU over the last 12-24 hours. It's a perfectly fine page for new visitors to get an idea of what the site is all about, or for people to stop by a couple times a day and get a quick summary of what's going on. But the items on it don't change very often -- it's certainly not the most dynamic page on the site. It's not where you go to see what's happening right now.
That would be the Latest Discussions page, where all the action is. Most people who are active on the forums navigate to the Latest Discussions page CONSTANTLY -- certainly far more frequently than the home page -- which is why Latest Discussions is the most prominent link in the location trail, appearing at the front of the location trail on almost all pages, and that's why the other pages appear below it in that location trail hierarchy.
I believe the biggest issue with the Home link so far is that some people who were used to using it are confused by its disappearance. I get that. But once it's been explained to them, then the issue is over for that user. I don't think new users are going to have the same problem, because they can't miss something that they never even saw in the first place.
We obviously have a difference of opinion on this, and I want you to know that I will continue to consider the suggestion. But I also wanted to explain why the change was made, and why I don't (currently) consider it to be too much of a problem.
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