Viewing unread posts

[sarah11918]

Unread management is my number one criteria for a daily/main client. (I'm defining unread as "not yet reached in my timeline/list" for simplicity. "Never see duplicate posts, even when multiple people boost them" as described in issue 1070 is a bonus, but more challenging than what I'm referring to.) This probably isn't a common use case, but diversity is the spice of life so I thought I'd contribute my (probably edge case) perspective in case this helps inform future development of this feature. (I am not suggesting you build for me, but maybe this gives you some interesting ideas!)

My primary requirement of unread management has me using a very small/niche Mastodon client (Rodent, less than 1K downloads) simply because of how well it handles tracking read vs unread. It will do this for any timeline/list, but notably, it can also do this per account, and I can choose to view a list of all yet unread posts by each individual/account, and I can "catch up" with individuals:

It is missing so many features (like even mutes/filters! this is how important that feature is to me that I'm sacrificing this!) and I often have to leave the app to interact with posts the way I'd like, searching for the author or post in another web client/app. I switched to this from a much more full-featured app (ZonePane) that similarly is excellent at keeping place/marking read on a list-by-list basis. But, it is subject to the 800 most recent posts limit, and I often "get behind." I have had a backlog of over 12,000 posts in Rodent and it will just keep storing them for me! 😂

When I follow someone, it's because I want to see their posts. When I sit down to read, I want control over what I'm seeing. Can I only handle some Inspirational Skeletor and birds of the day? Rodent lets me do that. (A list would let me do that too, but lists have an 800 post fetch limit, and when I did this with Zone Pane, I'd feel pressure to check in often enough that I wouldn't hit that limit and miss out on posts.) It also lets me scroll quickly through people posting looong sessions without having those posts interspersed with others. And, maybe it's just me, but I feel like always having the immediate context of "this was posted or boosted by X" is a helpful context that allows me to temper expectations in a number of ways. Yes, every post says who boosted it individually, but there's a lot of fresh context in each post. Seeing everything from person X over the last days/weeks gives me a real insight into what's been going on with/for them, without recalibrating myself for every. new. post. that enters my feed. I have really become accustomed to this way of viewing my feeds!

It's not perfect, but it injects a lot of calm into my social media experience, from never worrying about what I might have missed if I go offline for weeks at a time because I can always choose whether and exactly how to catch up, to being able to view exactly who or what I want at any time. If I have 5 min, I can check on 3 people vs get a random injection of "social" thrown at me.

Anyway, in light of the recent poll about who is (still? primarily?) using Elk as their client, I thought I'd share why it's not my personal client, and what key thing is missing that blocks me from using it. I do use it for the Astro account because it's a great posting/editing/replying experience, which is what I'd primarily need from an org account. (I don't read timelines and lists the same way from that account.) But as described above, I sacrifice a LOT of features to have unread management/keeping my unread place if I intend to read using a client. Elk is far superior on many fronts, just not the one I need. So I thought I'd share this in case it's helpful!