Is there a way to hide the HNQ List?

Question

Since there are now two separate SE sites where users are unscrupulously posting Age of Ultron spoilers in their question titles, is there some way to avoid seeing the Hot Network Questions lists, Keen? :)

Answer 1

You could get a piece of paper approximately three inches wide and use masking tape to attach it to the side of your monitor.

Artist's Impression.

Answer 2

I posted general instructions on how to accomplish this sort of thing over on Super User, but am happy to help people trying to accomplish specific webpage customizations too. We're gonna use something called User CSS, and an extension called Stylish that simplifies the application of User CSS.

1. You're gonna need either Firefox or Chrome to use Stylish. Once you've got one installed, click the appropriate link to install Stylish: Firefox Link, Chrome Link.
2. There will be a button (white 'S' over a colorful background) in your address bar that creates a new blank style for the current domain:

3. If you're using Chrome, below the code window, you enter the sites or URL patterns that the CSS should apply to. Be sure to select "URLs on the domain", which will automatically include all sitename.stackexchange.com and meta.sitename.stackexchange.com sites. For sites that don't follow this pattern, add their domain names as well. Some examples are shown in the screen show below (after which you can skip to step 5):

4. For Firefox, we specify which sites the CSS applies to using an @-moz-document rule, which we'll then fill with the customization code. Copy and paste this into code box:

   @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
   
   @-moz-document domain("stackexchange.com"), domain("stackoverflow.com"), domain("superuser.com"), domain("serverfault.com"), domain("askubuntu.com"), domain("stackapps.com")
   {
   
       /*CSS goes here*/
   
   }
   

   Also, give the customization a name, so you know what it is later on. Maybe 'Hide HNQ'. Enter that in the text field above the code box.

5. In the code box, we then put the code that hides the Hot Network Questions list. Copy and paste this:

   /* Hide Hot Network Questions. */
   #hot-network-questions {
       display: none !important;
   }
   

6. Click 'Save', and confirm it's working.

Answer 3

Yes, you can now do this easily by going to your profile and selecting the following option:

Hide Hot Network Questions
When you check this box, you will no longer see Hot Network Questions in the right sidebar on Q&A sites.

Answer 4

It's not as stylish as taping a bit of paper to your screen, but this is very easy if you use Adblock Plus (available for most desktop browsers):

That's:

##div#hot-network-questions.module

...and it works on all sites. In theory there's a small danger if any other site contains a <div> with id="hot-network-questions and a class module, but that's pretty unlikely...

Answer 5

I have two possible solutions.

The first is dependent on a browser 3rd-Party Extension.

I'm personally using an AdBlocker extension on Chrome, but I've seen the same functionality for other blockers, including FireFox extensions.

For BetaFish AdBlocker, I can right-click on the HNQ area and choose BetaFish AdBlocker > Block this Ad. Then, I move the slider until it blocks the HNQ div.

It will only block that area, and shouldn't affect the rest of the functionality of the site.

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Another option I've taken is to just block age-of-ultron tagged questions on SF.SE. Unfortunately, this apparently doesn't block the HNQ's with those tags, but it can at least block your site feed with those tags. (I'm assuming you've already done that, though, since you didn't ask about it. However, I'd like to leave this here for any potential visitors that aren't aware we can block tags.)

The settings for this are under the Preferences section of your user profile. The tags are site-dependent, so you much set up blocks for each site you visit that may have the offending material.