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Here's the sample screenshot from the original announcement (nearly seven years ago) of the (then) new activity page. This is what I remember it looking like as recently as yesterday:

old activity page layout

Here's what it looks like this morning. The top part is similar, the bottom part is formatted very differently, with a much less dense presentation:

new activity page layout

I couldn't find any announcement that the page format would change. Is this something wrong in my local configuration? I very much preferred the old dense version.

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    $\begingroup$ Yes, I am seeing this too since yesterday. Imho it is a much poorer UI (on a desktop) due to being less dense (among other defecits). $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Dec 8, 2021 at 15:28
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    $\begingroup$ The announcement is here: New responsive Activity page which is actually quite far from responsive. $\endgroup$
    – openletter.mousetail.nl Mod
    Dec 8, 2021 at 15:34
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    $\begingroup$ I see there was a strongly negative response to the announcement, and they went ahead with it anyway. I wish I could say I was surprised. $\endgroup$
    – MJD
    Dec 8, 2021 at 15:37
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    $\begingroup$ The sentiment over time is quite interesting as some users thought it applied only to mobile users (the announcement had net positive score until yesterday when the realisation was that desktop viewing would become extremely messy). $\endgroup$
    – openletter.mousetail.nl Mod
    Dec 8, 2021 at 15:39
  • $\begingroup$ I see now, thanks for pointing this out. My criticism of the response was unjust. All the strongly negative responses that I upvoted are from the last 24 hours. $\endgroup$
    – MJD
    Dec 8, 2021 at 15:41
  • $\begingroup$ To be fair, there was a video tour of the profile page, and some (now highly upvoted) critical answers were posted then. Though I reckon many people were like me, who didn't bother watching the preview video yet upvoted the post, because we're glad that at least this time they bothered to announce changes before shipping them. I didn't find out about some of the changes until today when I checked someone's profile for their answers tab, so it might take a while to discover everything, hence the delayed reaction. $\endgroup$
    – Elliot Yu
    Dec 8, 2021 at 18:51
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    $\begingroup$ Also, I'm amused that the SE staff member making this announcement is not the lead of their front end team, who made a few previous UI related announcements that were uh, not well received. I wonder if there's a bit of PR wrangling that eventually backfired... But I digress. $\endgroup$
    – Elliot Yu
    Dec 8, 2021 at 18:58
  • $\begingroup$ On the list of Answers in my profile the score shown is that of the associated question. Is this right? $\endgroup$
    – Peter Phipps
    Dec 8, 2021 at 19:40
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    $\begingroup$ Btw, here is an image from the meta.SE thread that shows vividly just how poor the new UI compares to the old in terms of info density on larger displays. $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Dec 8, 2021 at 19:49
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    $\begingroup$ You put it mildly, in the title, @MJD. Which is always wise. But overall, the title is an understatement, just in the sense that I've never seen such a change so poorly undertaken across SE. Nothing wrong at all with your title. This is just me chiming in with my displeasure given the changes we've all encountered. $\endgroup$
    – amWhy
    Dec 8, 2021 at 20:10
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    $\begingroup$ Users like me, who don't frequent meta.stackexchange, have been repeatedly blindsided by changes that are only announced there but affect us here. I would like to ask any math.stack user who regularly reads meta.stack to post to math.meta whenever something comes up on meta.stack that is going to affect us. $\endgroup$
    – Gerry Myerson
    Dec 8, 2021 at 21:42
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    $\begingroup$ The new activity page looks great on a mobile device. Also some mod tools have improved which would make my life a little easier. $\endgroup$
    – Paramanand Singh Mod
    Dec 8, 2021 at 23:58
  • $\begingroup$ @GerryMyerson those posts are normally featured, making them visible in the sidebar. $\endgroup$
    – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
    Dec 9, 2021 at 18:04
  • $\begingroup$ The question now is, will it be reverted or will they stick to it and just make adjustments soon ? Because as of today the mathjax is still messy on the activity page, and the all actions section is not directly displayed. $\endgroup$
    – zwim
    Dec 9, 2021 at 19:22
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    $\begingroup$ @GerryMyerson it should be on the sidebar if you go to the main mathematics site (or at least it works that way for me). $\endgroup$
    – Ekadh Singh - Reinstate Monica
    Dec 10, 2021 at 14:06

1 Answer 1

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It did change since yesterday, with the intention of introducing a layout that would be better on small devices. What wasn't clear to the people who saw the announcement ahead of time was that the layout would also be changing on large devices.

User response since the change has been strongly negative.

Change announcement and subsequent criticism: New responsive Activity page

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