"Remove from activity" in Mobile Classic?

August 10, 2017 5:29 PM

Pony request: can we get a "remove from activity" feature on the Recent Activity page in the Mobile Classic theme?

I primarily interact with MeFi via my smartphone and am a Classic Theme diehard. Every once in a while I'll participate in a thread that turns out to be very long-lived and stays very active for days after I've personally moved on and am no longer interested in keeping up with it. Usually these are contentious threads where people are posting long, detailed comments (frequently detailing why some other commenter is the Wrongest Person Ever, but that's beside the point) that each take up several screens' worth of real estate on my phone.

Because these threads are so active, they'll often be on the top of my Recent Activity page for days at a time. Having to scroll through ten five-paragraph essays just so that I can see if anybody else has commented in a two-hour-old AskMe about camping gear recommendations I wanted to follow is tedious and annoying, and I've always wished I could just remove those megathreads from my Recent Activity so that I didn't need to deal with them. However, this link does not exist, at least not in my theme of choice.

I've been meaning to ask about this for literally years now. I know the feature exists on Standard Classic, and I assume it's there on Modern as well, so hopefully this would be an easy one to implement in Mobile Classic. Is this something that anybody else would like to see? Is there a reason I'm not thinking of why this is a bad idea? Is there any chance the mods might see their way to making this pony dream a reality?

posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The to Feature Requests at 5:29 PM (11 comments total)

You know you can click into the thread itself and hit the 'remove from activity' feature there, right? I've had problems adding threads back to Recent Activity once removed while in Classic Theme mobile, had to go to Standard mode to do it, but 'remove' always works fine for me.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:15 PM on August 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hey you know, part of me felt like this was something so obvious that surely I was missing something—and sure enough there it is! That's close enough to the feature I was asking for. Now I feel both very stupid and very happy!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 7:30 PM on August 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

Not stupid, because I've often wished for that feature too and didn't know about the in-thread link! Thanks for asking!
posted by eamondaly at 7:38 PM on August 10, 2017 [2 favorites]

To piggyback on this pony request -- was there a reason why when the extra spacing got added between the [+] and the [!] in all the subsites in Classic Mobile, they stayed squished together in Recent Activity? Was it the usual 'don't want to put more strain on the servers than RA already does' purposeful decision, or just an oversight?
posted by oh yeah! at 7:52 PM on August 10, 2017

As I remember it was because they were trying not to have too much stuff on the page. I'd really like this feature though. I really don't think it would be too cluttery. To get around it I switch out of mobile view, remove it, and then switch back.
posted by bleep at 8:59 PM on August 10, 2017

Now I feel both very stupid and very happy!

Welcome to my world.
posted by AugustWest at 10:38 PM on August 10, 2017 [7 favorites]

was there a reason why when the extra spacing got added between the [+] and the [!] in all the subsites in Classic Mobile, they stayed squished together in Recent Activity?

I reported that to cortex a while back and he said it was an oversight and would put it on the list of Things To Fix When Stuff Isn't On Fire.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:46 PM on August 10, 2017

Now I feel both very stupid and very happy!

Welcome to my world.

Man I'd love to get there but I seem to be stalled at about 52%.
posted by phearlez at 12:49 PM on August 11, 2017

What I'd love is a "collapse activity" button so I can skip past the recent activity on the contentious thread, but not have to remove it entirely. Even if I had to collapse it each time RA reloads.
posted by janell at 12:56 PM on August 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

Piggybacking also- would there be a way to have just titles in recent activity? I click through to the thread anyway when it's "15 new comments, last 10 shown below" . So just title + new comments and then I could see everything in one quick check.
posted by freethefeet at 11:11 PM on August 11, 2017

What I'd love is a "collapse activity" button so I can skip past the recent activity on the contentious thread, but not have to remove it entirely.

There used to be a user script / extension that did this. I don't know if it still works or if it is available anywhere other than the now-defunct userscripts.org.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:04 AM on August 12, 2017