In case you did not see, we recently announced an experiment in adding a live activity panel to Stack Overflow. This new experiment is set to launch no earlier than August 4th, but more likely will go live a few days after the 4th.
If you aren’t sure what this experiment is about, I would encourage you to read the details on the original post. In summary, this new panel is intended to show users an indicator that the site is alive and vibrant, offering them some high-level data as to what’s taken place in the last hour. On that post, we shared a draft design to give you a sense for what this would look like, as well as a screenshot of how it would look situated on the homepage.
Overwhelmingly, feedback on this post strenuously requested the removal of the recently active user list from the panel. We’re happy to say that we’ve worked that request into the experiment, and it won’t go live with a list of recently active users. While it wasn’t the only question y’all had, it was clear that if we could address this issue in the time we have, we should - so we did.
The updated design will look like this on the platform:
If you have further questions about the experiment, please feel free to ask. You can ask either on this post or on the original one, though I’ll be monitoring this more recent post closer. Thanks again, sincerely, for your comments.
