I don't want to see this July 17, 2014 11:13 AM   Subscribe

Is there a "hide" button for Metafilter posts?

The front page of Metafilter is a great place, but there are topics that, as discussed on Metafilter, are distressing to me for any number of snowflakey reasons.

Because there's generally nothing wrong with the posts at all and I have no desire to curtail these discussions, it's less of a "flag it and move on" situation, and more of a "move on" deal, which rationally, I know I should do. However, when scrolling up and down the front page, just seeing the threads there causes a little pang of ickiness that I, personally, would like to avoid.

I'm looking for something that would make it easier for me to avoid entering threads I don't like by making them invisible to me. For example, my enjoyment of Facebook increased significantly when I started making extensive use of the "Hide" button.

Does a Chrome extension or Greasemonkey script like this exist? (this wiki page is no help) I might be willing to put in the effort to learn how to make one if it does not, I just don't want to reinvent the wheel.
posted by sparklemotion to Feature Requests at 11:13 AM (26 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite

The canonical answer to this is to use My Mefi and filter by tags. It's not perfect, and you'll need to go to the My Mefi page instead of the home page, but it will do what you want it to do.

There may be other third-party solutions, too - that's just the official one.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:14 AM on July 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Thanks, not perfect, but it seems to be working for the current button-pushing thread that tipped me over into posting this question.

A 3rd party solution that could be post specific, not tag specific would still be great, but is less of a pressing need, right now.
posted by sparklemotion at 11:33 AM on July 17, 2014


I hope this isn't about that eavesdropping-on-whales post.
posted by shakespeherian at 11:36 AM on July 17, 2014 [4 favorites]


Um, maybe this will help?
posted by phunniemee at 11:42 AM on July 17, 2014 [3 favorites]


If you have the mefi killfile installed you can block the name of the poster of the offending FPP until it falls off the front page. The post will not appear anywhere until you remove the OP's name from the killfile.
posted by elizardbits at 11:50 AM on July 17, 2014


Sometimes I doubt our commitment to sparklemotion.
posted by maxsparber at 11:57 AM on July 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


If you were looking to build your own, the Hide That Thread script by Flunkie might be a useful starting point.
posted by yuwtze at 12:16 PM on July 17, 2014


Reddit has this, and it's very nice when a post is just something I don't want to see.
posted by smackfu at 12:17 PM on July 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


You could read the site via RSS, and only open the stories you are interested in. Many feed readers also offer training/rules to exclude your ever seeing posts with certain authors or keywords.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:35 PM on July 17, 2014


There's this one
(via)
posted by Mchelly at 12:54 PM on July 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Bummer, it doesn't work on Goggle Chrome when you're logged it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:12 PM on July 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Could you use a RSS reader and then just delete the posts you don't want to see and then use that reader to then click through to the posts/discussions?
posted by Jacqueline at 1:12 PM on July 17, 2014


What about a "My MeFie" page, which is equivalent to My MeFi, but excludes tags rather than includes?
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:35 PM on July 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Or an equivalent toggle on My MeFi.
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:53 PM on July 17, 2014


MyMefi does exclude tags, though. It's the second dialog box in the preferences.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:28 PM on July 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ah, cool -- and it seems to work without using the first dialog. I had presumed otherwise.

Carry on!
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:48 PM on July 17, 2014


Breaking News: The world is not perfect and all things do not suit all people. Individuals are free to ignore what does not suit them except for taxes, traffic laws, and other civic duties.
posted by Cranberry at 4:56 PM on July 17, 2014 [2 favorites]


Has there ever been a 'breaking news' comment on the internet that was not dickish?
posted by shakespeherian at 4:59 PM on July 17, 2014 [20 favorites]


IMPORTANT UPDATE:


No.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:28 PM on July 17, 2014 [8 favorites]


Individuals are free to ignore what does not suit them except for taxes, traffic laws, and other civic duties.

They are also free to look for solutions to their needs as well as discuss both needs and solutions with others.
posted by Celsius1414 at 5:32 PM on July 17, 2014 [9 favorites]


I was just thinking about this the other day, thanks for bringing it up.
posted by desjardins at 6:20 PM on July 17, 2014


Hey, I think this would be a good idea for me, too, both for the reasons you brought up and also as a sort of "mark as read" thing.

So, here's a Chrome extension I just wrote for that.

There's several caveats to using this:

- It is barely tested.
- You must be logged in to use it. (In fact, you must be logged in before you first visit the site with the extension, due to a bug I just discovered.)
- If you are using the Professional White theme, the "X" to kill off posts does not show up unless you hover over it because I made it white.

…and more, probably!

But let me know about any problems, and I'll try to fix them. I'm definitely going to take care of the bug I mentioned.

If anyone want to make it better, here's the source.
posted by ignignokt at 6:38 PM on July 17, 2014 [7 favorites]


inignokt! I never doubted your commitment.

This is perfect (besides the fact that I assume you browse with titles turned off...)

Thank you all for your suggestions!
posted by sparklemotion at 7:01 PM on July 17, 2014


Oh, yeah – I forgot about the titles. I'm not committed to those, I guess!

I did, however, fix the bug that happened when you visit logged out first, then come back logged in! Chrome should auto update it at some point.
posted by ignignokt at 9:23 PM on July 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seconding mymefi as a great way to avoid posts that don't interest you. So far I have just used the tag cloud to find the tags I want to hide, but when I work out how to see the tags of individual posts, I'll improve my filters.

Another thing that totally reduces "Grar levels" of reading metafilter (especially echo chamber-y threads) is to anonymize comments and hide favorites by using adblocker's element hider to mask that line of the page. That way you don't see who is making the type of comment you dislike, and you don't see bandwagon comments getting 90 favorites!!! and comments you agree with getting 0 favorites. Everything is on a level pegging.

This method is better suited to lurkers but if you do want to comment, you just temporarily turn off Adblock for the page and reload. All commenter identities and favorites are then revealed.

My level of eye-rolling has significantly reduced with this. I'm also working on finding some way of blocking certain commenter names so they don't even appear in quoted text. I know this is possible (probably with a Greasemonkey script) but haven't figured it out yet. Metafilter seems to have gotten so fighty and snarky recently that I can only really enjoy it by blocking things.
posted by guy72277 at 12:38 AM on July 18, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seconding mymefi as a great way to avoid posts that don't interest you.

Strongly disagree, it's pretty terrible, as it relies on other people to filter things for you.

It only works if people's tagging methodology matches yours and people being people it won't. It would be far better to implement a hide button, as it would allow a person to customize the site to their preference.

The Greasemonkey script MeFi Nope by rouftop works great with Firefox and Chrome. It puts a button titled NOPE next to each post and you can hide it as you see fit. Simple and elegant.

It wasn't working with Chrome originally, but I emailed rooftop and he was great about updating it (hadn't been designed to work with secure connections, that's fixed now).
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:27 AM on July 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


« Older Trying to Track Down an Old Comment   |   FPP's celebrating every judge's ruling on... Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments