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On the page of "top questions" that opens when I go to mathoverflow.net, each question is accompanied by information about what happened to it most recently. The information consists of "asked" or "answered" or "modified", followed by information about who did it and when. I would find it useful if "modified" could be upgraded to indicate whether the modification was in a question or in an answer. (Here "useful" means that it can influence whether I want to look at the question.) It seems that the information I'm asking for should be easily available in the system, so my request would be just to display it on this home page.

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    $\begingroup$ I think one could additionally indicate whether the person having made the last modification is the OP of the question / answer or someone else, and roughly how many percent of the text have been changed. $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    Nov 24, 2014 at 14:35
  • $\begingroup$ Should it only display the most recent modification? If someone makes a significant change to the question and then someone else corrects a typo in their answer to the same question two minutes later, the details of the latest edit are misleading. I agree that such a thing could be useful, but deciding what information exactly is useful seems nontrivial. $\endgroup$ Nov 24, 2014 at 15:06
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    $\begingroup$ @JoonasIlmavirta I agree that the information I asked for might not always be the optimal information, but I was looking for something that could be implemented easily. Even if it's not perfect, it would be better (in my opinion) than the present system. $\endgroup$ Nov 24, 2014 at 15:38
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    $\begingroup$ I have long wished for a small symbol, perhaps a colored box with a Q or A or D (for deleted) next to and after the name of the person making the change, so I could hover over that and get the detail of the major modification. Without the mouseover, the color-letter combo could still reveal useful info about the modification. Even better would be if the mouse-over would reveal if there were any extant comments made after the modification, and who made the latest extant comment. Gerhard "Sometimes Not Too Much Information" Paseman, 2014.11.24 $\endgroup$ Nov 24, 2014 at 21:51
  • $\begingroup$ I realized that what I’ve just suggested in a now deleted comment is already implemented, and incidentally, it provides the information Andreas asks for. The “asked/answered/modified” note is clickable, it gives a direct link to the changed post. The url of the link ends with “.../?lastactivity” if and only if the changed post is an answer, hence one can distinguish modified questions from answers by hovering over that link. $\endgroup$ Nov 26, 2014 at 17:15
  • $\begingroup$ Hmm, no, modified questions occasionally have ?lastactivity as well. I do not understand the algorithm. $\endgroup$ Nov 26, 2014 at 17:30
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    $\begingroup$ The StackApp "Stack Activity" stackapps.com/questions/4134/… may may be of help, if your browser is Chrome or Firefox, etc. I use it. See also meta.stackexchange.com/questions/145039/…. $\endgroup$
    – jeq
    Nov 26, 2014 at 19:21

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Thanks to jeq's suggestion, there is an answer on stackapps for that exact purpose! That doesn't mean it shouldn't be a standard feature, but it does mean that you can have this feature right now.

The script is called Stack Activity. I've just tested it on Chrome and it works wonderfully:

Stack Activity Screenshot

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    $\begingroup$ Deleted a comment about being unable to install the script. More experimentation led to what appears to be success. Thanks. $\endgroup$ Nov 29, 2014 at 1:01
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    $\begingroup$ The experimentation in my previous comment concerned installing the script on my university computer, a Mac running Mavericks. On my laptop, which still runs SnowLeopard (because for various reasons I've refused to "up"grade it to Lion or anything newer), the installation process was completely obvious. $\endgroup$ Dec 6, 2014 at 2:02

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