Yea, I saw that. I don't remember that feature at all though. Just last week I was fighting through mountain sized menus of followers and now it's clean. Anyone know when it happened?
Shane's right, the option was added at the earliest 6 months ago. But I do believe they recently made it default. Wasn't in any patch notes though, to my knowledge at least.
It seems to be buggy... or something. Sometimes it will hide all options and show only examine, other times it shows everything. I don't think this is quantity dependent.