There's actually no way to clear all messages with a particular id as it stands, because having multiple DOM elements with the same id is actually a violation of the spec ([ids should be unique](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dom.html#the-id-attribute)), and this has concrete implications. E.g., if there are multiple elements with id "id_video_skipped", then calling `document.getElementById("id_video_skipped").remove()` or `$("#id_video_skipped").remove()` will remove only the first element with that id (in Chrome, at least; in some browsers, might be the last, not sure). So if we're thinking of this as "id" (and implementing it as such), then having duplicates is definitely not desired, and they should always be cleared. If we want to do something like what you're describing (having a class of messages that can be cleared en masse), then we could look into having optional classes associated with messages, as well.

The only other place `clear_message` is being called (anywhere in the project, as far as I can tell) is in `handleFailedAPI` inside video_download.html, and it will no longer be necessary, so I'll remove it.