First a single challenge, then a book of challenges. Now I've made this into a place where I will post thoughts and reflections and anything else the might occur to me. Although the selection criteria is random, I hope that the material within will...
A few days ago, a change slipped into my newsfeed. Very quietly, without making a single splash, a coding change made this possible.
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See it? Perhaps not, unless you've been paying close attention and have been hit with the same annoyance I've experienced in the past. I'm speaking about the way that Wattpad handles newsfeed messages when a person who you are following decides to follow multiple people all at once.
Previously, each and every new person being followed would generate a message like the one above for all of the followers of the person clicking "Follow". In some cases, people would purposely exploit this by following the exact same person over and over again, effectively flooding newsfeeds with nothing but these messages. Since I like being able to check my newsfeed to see what's happened since I last logged in (for example, after I get back from work), I found it very annoying that every message that came in before this flood would become all but inaccessible. I was a little less annoyed when I knew that people were not doing this on purpose, like a person who had recently started a new account and was simply following all the people they legitimately wanted to follow, but it still didn't work out well for my newsfeed.
So what was the thing I noticed? I noticed that these messages are now grouped together, displaying just one person who was followed and giving the option to click "See more". Effectively, all of the information is still right there for anyone who wants to see it, and anyone who doesn't or anyone who wants to see this information AND everything below it in the newsfeed can now go about business as usual. Simple and effective.
Since I work as a programmer, I took one look at that and thought, "Wow, some programmer working at Wattpad did that for me." And I just really wanted to thank that person.
Of course, I have no idea who it was. None of us really know any of the people who are working hard to keep this website that we love up and running; like this change, they just quietly do their thing to make our lives better.
I know we all like to complain when things aren't working the way we want, but I wonder if we take enough time to celebrate all of the things that are right. So this one goes out to the programmers and employees of Wattpad. Thank you for making this website for us. And here's to all the people out there in the world just doing their thing to make some people's lives a little better. You deserve to be thanked for everything you do.
