Timeline for Turning off the mobile feed for the Stack Exchange app
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 10, 2021 at 10:35 | comment | added | This_is_NOT_a_forum | What do you mean by "find a way to undecided it more efficiently"? Can you elaborate? | |
| Jul 10, 2021 at 10:34 | history | edited | This_is_NOT_a_forum | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Active reading. Expanded. [(its = possessive, it's = "it is" or "it has". See for example <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&t=1m20s> and <https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Its-and-It%27s>.)]
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| Jul 4, 2021 at 1:59 | comment | added | Journeyman Geek Mod | @Stilez - I'm under the impression push notifications rely on GCN (or FCN - there's no mention of an update). I think push notifications already do (should?) rely on google. I'm not a developer I mean in theory you could poll every so often but that's wasteful - but some things do rely on google. Now I'm wondering what else SE runs that the apps rely on.... | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 18:16 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | @danzel Formally, we admitted we weren't going back to them at the beginning of 2020. But no one has been "assigned" to them in any capacity since mid-2017 and the SO apps were delisted (and now no longer work) in mid-2019. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 18:10 | comment | added | danzel | @animuson at which point did SE decide to not develop the app any further? I am still very overwhelmed by that fact as I only learned it today. And I'm sure there would have been a way to let users know in advance. Why, for example, didn't SE tell the app users e.g. 2 days in advance? | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 17:24 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | @zcoop98 Because our deciding to kill the apps was a direct result of some of those questions poking and prodding at us about their status, and those were appropriate places to make those statements. When development initially stopped so long ago, back in like 2015, it was meant to be a temporary pause. Which devolved into "no plans to start again" to shutting down the Stack Overflow apps to delisting the Stack Exchange apps. I don't think anyone here ever considered a network-wide featured announcement because the mobile app user base is very small. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 17:10 | comment | added | zcoop98 | @animuson Is there a reason there wasn't a formal announcement post made about the state of the apps prior to this? I just dug through previous posts here and on Meta.SO, and all I can find is the community FAQ created last year and some staff answers on posts asking about the app(s), but not a single standalone announcement-style post from staff itself. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:57 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | Web push is implemented by the browser. Afaik all of the major players Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari support it, though I don't know if all of them also support it on their mobile browsers (I believe they do). | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:50 | comment | added | Stilez | A shame. But thank you for the heads up. Sadly I'm not sure whether or not web push will work for me - it depends on matters I don't know about. Namely, I run my phone free of Google proprietary software, which means if push notifications require Google's assistance, and not just a modern browser, that's in doubt. I suspect I'm not the only google-free user in this highly tech-aware community. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:25 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | I will say there is little value in thinking up "possible solutions" as it is far more complicated than that. E.g. updating either app would have required very significant time investments because they hadn't been maintained in so long - we would not have been allowed to publish an update to them without making many other changes. Neither of them are even listed on the stores anymore because of those issues. But I also see little value in continuing this conversation here - nothing surrounding the apps is going to change. They are dead and you should expect it to stop working eventually. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:17 | comment | added | Stilez | Past history is moot. You could have hired a dev for a day to add a simple startup splash screen or a text message above the feed. If thats a days work id be amazed. You could have added dummy items to the feed from the API. So don't say you told users repeatedly when you did absolutely nothing all this time, except via the website -- which those affected were by definition rarely or never going to hear about. Please look into ways to revive this in some manner that is economical, because those caring to DL an app are probably some of your keenest users. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:15 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | I will give you this direct warning, though: at some point in the future, no idea when, we will shut down the apps completely. We only kept them alive because many users enjoyed being able to get notifications through them and indicated that was the only reason they even used the apps. Whenever we are finally able to implement web push notifications, there will likely be a serious discussion about dropping the apps. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 14:11 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | That is an underlying problem with something being unsupported. To properly warn people, it would have required further app development to incorporate warnings into the app, which was a hard no. We don't even have an Android app developer anymore. So all we really had was here on meta. Unfortunately, there just really isn't anything we can do about those of you who still use the app in this way but encourage you to use the website instead. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 13:59 | comment | added | Stilez | I'm sure so. Except obviously, this didn't happen. A user has no obvious way to know an app is "unsupported for years", and if there was anything "repeatedly told" then its not actually told if it doesn't appear where people actually would look. Which would be my email, and feeds on the app. Not a thing in either, much less anything recently or repeatedly. If you are warning app users, then you kinda need to warn them in ways that app users will see. But that's moot. The issues aren't "we warned you". The issue is, regardless of warning, the action taken damages contribution. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 13:43 | comment | added | animuson StaffMod | The apps have been unsupported for years and we have repeatedly told users that app-specific paths, like this one, could disappear at any moment. There was quite a lot of advance notice. | |
| Jul 1, 2021 at 12:24 | history | answered | Stilez | CC BY-SA 4.0 |