Pony Request: Recent activity on my recent activity? October 25, 2018 3:44 PM Subscribe
OK, so I check recent activity all the time. It would be rad if I could know if any of those posts had new comments without having to scroll to the bottom of each "last ten comments". I'm open to many different implementations, but a badge on the recent activity link might be nice, but even a "no new activity since you last loaded this page you obsessive advicepig." text near the top would be nice.
I am really liking the "manage posts in recent activity" link and would enjoy having the option for it to be linked from the top of the page for easier access.
posted by aniola at 4:08 PM on October 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by aniola at 4:08 PM on October 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
I literally load recent activity just to access that link, and I know recent activity is heavy and complicated.
posted by aniola at 4:10 PM on October 25, 2018
posted by aniola at 4:10 PM on October 25, 2018
In my experience lately, Recent Activity is at least partly broken. I've been running into the same problem I reported previously where Recent Activity on My Favorites won't load for me. Sometimes if I'm doing things in other tabs I'll just keep clicking "reload tab" every time I notice it's stalled out; some days this week it's taken four to six hours of doing that before it successfully loads.
It also took a little over 24 seconds to load the "my MetaTalk posts" page (https://www.metafilter.com/activity/90887/posts/meta/) when I went to check it while writing this comment, for whatever that's worth. I get similarly long load times for "my MeFi posts" and "my AskMe posts", but at least they do generally load, unlike Recent Activity on My Favorites.
posted by Lexica at 4:17 PM on October 25, 2018
It also took a little over 24 seconds to load the "my MetaTalk posts" page (https://www.metafilter.com/activity/90887/posts/meta/) when I went to check it while writing this comment, for whatever that's worth. I get similarly long load times for "my MeFi posts" and "my AskMe posts", but at least they do generally load, unlike Recent Activity on My Favorites.
posted by Lexica at 4:17 PM on October 25, 2018
I would fucking love this.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:17 PM on October 25, 2018
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:17 PM on October 25, 2018
I would like an option to collapse/ compress the display of given thread in Recent Activity. For the slow moving threads in which I tend to comment, the top comment in RA stays the same long enough that I know there is nothing new and I would so love a way to just skip to the next thread rather than scrolling past the 10 comments.
posted by janell at 8:48 PM on October 25, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by janell at 8:48 PM on October 25, 2018 [4 favorites]
This is the main way I use this site, leaps and bounds above any other page or feature. I suspect I’m not alone here. I too would fucking love this.
It’d be interesting to see from an analytics perspective if this causes an drop in page time for users, as people aren’t having to scroll and bounce when they see nothing has changed. This is one of those cases when shorter time spent on page is a good thing!
Also, if there is a drop on time spent on page for users and you find that it has impact on the time spent on the site as a whole it’s one indicator of how much users see Recent Activity as their go to (like me).
All fun things to watch as you roll this out.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:12 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
It’d be interesting to see from an analytics perspective if this causes an drop in page time for users, as people aren’t having to scroll and bounce when they see nothing has changed. This is one of those cases when shorter time spent on page is a good thing!
Also, if there is a drop on time spent on page for users and you find that it has impact on the time spent on the site as a whole it’s one indicator of how much users see Recent Activity as their go to (like me).
All fun things to watch as you roll this out.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:12 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
Perhaps this could work: a "mark as read" button, that clears everything before that, recording the current time stamp, or that of the most recent comment on the page. The next time you reload, it only shows comments (or posts with comments) newer than that.
What browser are you using? Anything that allows extensions, like Greasemonkey?
posted by Pronoiac at 12:56 AM on October 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
What browser are you using? Anything that allows extensions, like Greasemonkey?
posted by Pronoiac at 12:56 AM on October 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
I'd love to have this or something like it. Maybe an upside-down list of comments, where the latest comment is first. That way you can tell much more quickly if you're caught up or not.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:32 AM on October 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:32 AM on October 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
Recent Activity on My Favorites won't load for me
This might not help you, but next to the [add to favorites] there is [add to activity]. I use that to keep track of posts where I don't have anything to add in a comment — the posts now show up in regular Recent Activity.
posted by exogenous at 8:56 AM on October 26, 2018
This might not help you, but next to the [add to favorites] there is [add to activity]. I use that to keep track of posts where I don't have anything to add in a comment — the posts now show up in regular Recent Activity.
posted by exogenous at 8:56 AM on October 26, 2018
I find Recent Activity to be not-very-useful (especially on a phone) for specifically the reason advicepig states. I like the idea of it in principle, but in practice it's a lot of work (relatively speaking) to scroll through all the posts that are in Recent Activity and see whether or not any of those comments down at the bottom are actually new ones.
I would also love it if we could remove posts from Recent Activity without having to click through to the post itself. I find doing that pretty cumbersome, and having a bunch of posts in my Recent Activity that I don't actually care to monitor is another thing that makes me not actually bother using it even though in principle I would like to.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:39 PM on October 27, 2018
I would also love it if we could remove posts from Recent Activity without having to click through to the post itself. I find doing that pretty cumbersome, and having a bunch of posts in my Recent Activity that I don't actually care to monitor is another thing that makes me not actually bother using it even though in principle I would like to.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:39 PM on October 27, 2018
I hate a "(remove from activity)" link under posts on Recent Activity, at least on mobile.
posted by Pronoiac at 3:45 PM on October 27, 2018
posted by Pronoiac at 3:45 PM on October 27, 2018
I may be the only one who finds the current system strikes the right balance between allowing me to find new posts of genuine interest while not creating another obsessive touchstone.
posted by wnissen at 5:30 PM on October 29, 2018
posted by wnissen at 5:30 PM on October 29, 2018
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I'll reiterate for general consumption what I said in email, which is that something like this is possible in principle—probably in the form of just some sort of top-of-page indicator for Recent Activity if there's been no new comments in any followed threads since your last load—but in practice mussing with that query is always kinda dancing with the devil because it's so heavy and complicated already. So we'll poke at it as we're able but this falls a bit back burner as things we're likely to get to go.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:48 PM on October 25, 2018 [2 favorites]