PREFERENCES

thisishappening lets you tell us what kind of events you like and don't like, using existing events as starting points. When you click on a "send me more events like this" or "don't send me any more events like this" link, we show you the attributes of that event to let you tell us why. You can also edit these preferences all at once in your Personal Profile.

Preferences have three possible states:

• YES means we send you those kinds of events. When you say YES to an Organization (like The Warhol) or an Event Type (like Music:Rock:Indie), you've Subscribed to it.
• NO means we don't send you any of these kinds of events. The system Filters those things out of the events on your home page and in your weekly email. You still see those events on all of the Browse pages.
• None means you haven't expressed a preference either way.

Sponsors and features with a grey background haven't registered with us, so you can't subscribe to them.

You have detailed control over all of your Preferences from within your Personal Profile section.

You might still see some events that you've expressed a NO preference about from your Editor(s) - the system doesn't filter their recommendations. Things could get kind of boring if it did. Do you want to live in a bubble where you only get the things you already expect? No, we didn't think so. Glad that's settled.

EVENT TYPES

The event type system, which also gets called categories, is a hierarchy. Higher level categories like "Music" contain sub-categories like "Rock" and "Jazz". These sub-categories in turn have sub-sub-categories like "Garage Rock" and "Swing". You see them shown like this:

Music:Rock:Garage Rock

If you subscribe to Music you get ALL music events. If you subscribe to Garage Rock you ONLY get Music:Rock:Garage Rock events.

You have detailed control over these settings from within your Personal Profile section. You can say YES or NO to every event type. For example, you could say YES to Music then say NO to Music:Electronic. We have no idea why you'd do such a thing, but you'd then get all Music EXCEPT Electronic.

YOUR HOME PAGE AND WEEKLY EMAIL

Your home page and weekly email show you all the events produced by your Preferences. The possible sections:

Editors you've subscribed to
Organizations you've subscribed to
Venues you've subscribed to
Events produced by your event type preferences

Whether or not you see all of these sections is determined by how you've set your Preferences, and what events are in the system.

Some Frequently Asked Questions about how things work:

I've subscribed to an organization, but they don't always show up in my email/on my home page. Why not?

If they don't have any current events, the home page/email doesn't show them. When they have an upcoming event, you'll see them. Please note it's also a possibility that they might actually have current events but didn't put it into the system. The organizations themselves are almost entirely responsible for putting events into thisishappening; some are good about keeping up, some aren't. Some of the more motivated Editors will put events in for them if they think it's important.

I'm a little confused about how the "Events produced by your event type preferences" works. What determines what events show up there?

The magical thisishappening software starts by looking for everything you've got a YES preference for, then takes out everything you've got a NO preference for, then takes out any event that has already shown up because it's one of your Editor's Picks or produced by an Organization/Venue you've subscribed to.