[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to...
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Ask HN: Why doesn't HN alert users in some manner to new replies?
The last thing I found was this Show HN post from 2016
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539)
Author : warrenm
Score : 172 points
Date : 2022-02-17 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
| samatman wrote:
| The only thing I'm personally missing from the current system is
| a chance to find replies to older comments.
|
| As an HN-ish proposal, how about a link on the user page for
| replies, but only to comments which can't be downvoted (24 hours,
| for those who might not know)? It could have a number next to it
| and would surface replies from newest to oldest, but again, only
| to comments outside of the downvote window.
|
| This would allow some conversations of technical interest to play
| out days or weeks later, which is of value to users who find
| hacker news threads sometimes years after the topic was current.
|
| This avoids the dopamine bump of active notifications completely,
| and prevents tossing gasoline on flamewars, which only rage while
| the antikarma button is active.
| emptybottle wrote:
| It would change the dynamics of the comment section a lot.
|
| Instead of varied thoughts from many people in replies you'd be
| much more likely to have the one person arguing their point
| against replies which is terrible every time I see ot.
| robomartin wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| 9,000 notifications in 25 days!
|
| Notifications are evil. Or, they can be...
|
| Flo by Moen: I have received nearly 9,000 emails from Flo between
| January 24th and today, February 17th. Yes, that is an average of
| 360 emails per for 25 days.
|
| Curious? Read on.
|
| Our insurance company had us install a water leak sensor device
| made by Moen called "Flo":
|
| https://www.moen.com/search/smart+water
|
| My opinion (and just my opinion) it's a piece of garbage, a waste
| of time and money.
|
| With that out of the way...
|
| This thing alerts you when it detects various event. It's
| supposed to be smart? Nah, actually, it's dumb as &*ck.
|
| Example: One of my kids decided a 1.5 hour shower was a good
| idea. Flo shutoff the water to the entire house at 90 minutes. If
| this had been a broken pipe in the walls, running for 90 minutes,
| well, the damage would easily be in the hundreds of thousands of
| dollars. This is stupid. It protects nothing.
|
| The only scenario where that would have had some value might be
| if you go on vacation for a week and a water pipe breaks. OK,
| well, I generally shutoff the water when we go on vacation, so
| there is no value to this device.
|
| One of the particular notifications has to do with water
| pressure. Flo sends you an alarm to your phone (via their app)
| and via email when it exceeds a certain value. We have always had
| high water pressure. By always I mean, over twenty years. No
| problems at all. I like this. High water pressure is useful. Flo
| does not like it.
|
| I probably get no less than ten notifications per day on the app
| about water pressure. You can snooze them for 24 hours on the
| app. So, I have to deal with these nonsense notifications every
| single day. And I can't tell Flo "this is normal, forever, don't
| bug me".
|
| Email?
|
| As I said at the top, about 360 emails per day, on average, for
| high water pressure. I now have a collection of nearly 9,000 of
| these email notifications received during the last 25 days.
|
| Evil.
| warrenm wrote:
| I didn't say you should get 9000 emails in 25 days
|
| I said there should be a way to see that you have replies to a
| submission or comment so you know someone's looking for your
| response
| robomartin wrote:
| This was not a reply to what you said. It is a real-life
| example of how evil notification can be. Probably the most
| extreme example I have ever seen.
|
| As for your comment, I understand. I went 11 days before
| posting the above reply. I was really busy with work.
| Frankly, I appreciate that HN does not have notifications.
| Most of what we all discuss in online forums, going back to
| my days on USENET, isn't important enough to consume the
| clock cycles. Notifications would just make us waste more
| time.
|
| Yes, I am calling most of it a waste of time. If I was
| pressed to pick a number I would say that 1% to 5% might have
| some value. This might sound harsh. Take it as one person's
| opinion, which means it has little value and isn't at all
| relevant to your own context.
| andrew_ wrote:
| One less dopamine hit that I can definitely live without. I also
| feel it gives people less incentive to craft replies _for others_
| and instead comment intelligently (yes, there are many replies
| which are not that, but I have faith the majority are)
| jlcoff wrote:
| Because I suspect YC minimally maintain HN. Not specifically a
| bad per-se, but don't expect anything new to happen.
| dang wrote:
| I work on the code every day! or at least if I don't, it's a
| bad day.
|
| There are a lot of changes, just mostly not visible, or only
| subtly visible. That's on purpose, because (a) users hate
| design changes and (b) pg-style minimalism is encoded into the
| DNA and it would be a mistake to mess with that.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Lots of sour grapes rationalizing.
|
| Every deprived addict, from the grounded Minecraft player to the
| imprisoned dope fiend, will tell you the deprivation was good for
| him, but as soon he's given a shot at another fix, he'll
| instantly take it.
|
| I hate Slack's always-on nature. That I keep using it should tell
| me how I really feel about it.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Both can be true. We can hate the things that addict us and
| still be uncontrollably driven to them.
|
| If I could guaranteed overpower all my subconscious drives by
| choice I'd take that opportunity in a heartbeat.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| You can hate the guilt, but you can't hate the pleasure --
| that wouldn't make any sense.
| werber wrote:
| That sounds horrible, I'm usually using hn while working, the
| last thing I need is another distraction. I like intentionality
| of the platform
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| Automatic plug whenever I see this asked: nnhackernews.
| gerikson wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, I just installed (via MELPA), added it as a
| secondary select method, and restarted Gnus. I can see the
| "groups" show up, but when I try to enter them I get
|
| > Symbol's value as variable is void: t1
|
| Open an issue at https://github.com/dickmao/nnhackernews ?
| deepsun wrote:
| Try RSS, they have it for replies.
| mdoms wrote:
| HN barely holds together as it is. Despite the simplicity of it
| the site undergoes frequent outages and performance degradations.
| Long threads get paged in an absolutely insane way because of
| performance problems and a fix has been underway for several
| years according to the stock message dang leaves at the top of
| such threads.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I don't mind the absence of notifications per se (in fact I think
| it's a good thing).
|
| But I do mind that there is no easy way (not even visually!) to
| track "unread" replies, especially direct replies in older posts.
|
| It does make me wonder how many chances I've missed at
| stimulating conversation on a topic I was interested, whereas now
| it just looks like I'm ghosting people.
|
| I wouldn't mind "tagging" for instance (i.e. not all
| notifications enabled by default, but the ability to be notified
| when "tagged", e.g. via @username)
| PStamatiou wrote:
| HN had this functionality for a while some 10+ years ago. Our YC
| startup Notifo had integration for HN reply pushes.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1203104
| wanda wrote:
| Because it is a feature.
|
| It is one of the last and most triumphant remnants of the era of
| forums.
|
| You log in when you want; you read things you want to read, when
| you want to read them.
|
| It is not a cult of personality revolving around _who_ replies to
| what. The idea, the object is centre stage -- and that 's the way
| it should be.
|
| It is not a social network. It is a news aggregator where
| comments add to, and revolve around, the links submitted and the
| ideas they represent.
|
| This is a place for exchanging knowledge.
|
| There really aren't many places like HN around, and I treasure
| it.
| pvg wrote:
| This has been addressed by dang before, one representative
| pastequote from a recent (ish) comment:
|
| _Yes, I think we 'll continue to avoid the notification system,
| not just because of flamewars but also because (relatedly) it's
| not so compatible with curiosity. Push notifications seem to jack
| up the nervous system in a way that's good for engagement but not
| necessarily for users--we all experience this elsewhere on the
| internet, and on HN we're in the blessed position of not needing
| to juice the numbers._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22937472
| secondaryacct wrote:
| Yeah as a reddit troll myself I enjoy the freedom of never
| caring and pursuing flaming here... people like me get addicted
| to the reaction and start writing only to trigger reactions.
| Here at least I post constructively sometimes.
| walrus01 wrote:
| If you use traditional social media such as
| facebook/instagram/twitter/etc on a mobile device, the best
| thing you can possibly do in android 9 or later is to disable
| _all_ forms of push notification for the entire app. Not just
| in the app 's settings but at the operating system level.
|
| Anything that would generate a notification requiring a swipe-
| down from the top of the screen, or making a noise, seeing what
| the notification is and either clicking on it or swiping it
| away, disable that entirely.
|
| I also allow exactly zero websites to send push notifications
| via browser on my desktop/laptop workstation systems.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I very much appreciate this!
| cft wrote:
| Upvoted
| quesera wrote:
| Strongly agreed!
|
| I think the requirement that at least two participants need to
| make some effort to keep the conversation going, is _generally_
| an extremely good thing.
|
| For the very rare thread where I hope for a belated reply, I'll
| keep a tab open and refresh it every day or two until I give up
| or it expires.
| divbzero wrote:
| I agree strongly too.
|
| Participants in a subthread might not even look again so
| default action is _no reply_. This is a great feature because
| it allows non-constructive subthreads to fade away with ease.
| Notifications would change this whole dynamic.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| A take I agree with. I'm glad I'm not bombarded by dozens of
| blinking status indicators every time I load up HN to see
| what's interesting today.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree. My preference is not to have any reply notifications.
| Most of the time the comments or article have aged out of view
| within a day or two, and no new comments are being posted there
| anyways.
|
| If it is something _important_ and could be positive, you could
| always try contacting the poster directly if they have an email
| on their profile.
| warrenm wrote:
| That's incredibly disappointing :(
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Why? Most users don't want them. And for those that do,
| there's https://www.hnreplies.com/, as well as other options
| mentioned elsewhere here.
| warrenm wrote:
| That you have to use one of what ...a dozen[ish] options
| I've seen posted today to get to what is a fundamentally
| _standard_ part of every forum experience (except this one)
| shows how out of touch the HN devs are, imo
| krapp wrote:
| They aren't out of touch, they understand the culture.
| People here want Hacker News to feel like the last thirty
| years of the web didn't happen. They don't want Hacker
| News to be modern, least of all to be _like other
| forums._ They want the Bohemian indulgence of 90 's era
| web ugliness with complete disregard for standards, and
| the ascetic purity of painfully minimalist UX that
| appeals to their contrarian, anti-modern sensibilities.
| pvg wrote:
| The design is based directly on the design of several
| (what we now call) 'Web 2.0' sites so the idea it's a sop
| to the retro-hipster sensibilities of 90's-longing users
| itself feels like a bit of an overwrought personal
| indulgence.
| ziggus wrote:
| Agreed. In fact, I'd like to see HN go even further and
| close discussions after some limit has been reached,
| whether it's time- or attention-based.
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's a beautifully quiet design. If I want to check if someone
| came back I can, and sometimes I don't have the energy to look.
| The quality is the effect of all these little things, and not
| something one could affect top down in another design.
|
| I suspect there is a ton of sophisticated stuff going on behind
| the scenes, but even if there were, the effect is still too
| good to complain about.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I suspect this too, but I suspect even more credit is due to
| the dang and the moderators quietly doing tastefully heroic
| work.
| jzig wrote:
| Then provide a daily or weekly digest. What's the point in
| contributing to a black hole with no feedback?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You can go and check your threads using the Thread link
| above. If course I now realize this comment is sort of
| redundant... :)
| kodah wrote:
| I really like the lack of push notifications. Sometimes I'll
| make a reply during my morning coffee, do some work, then check
| back in the afternoon to find hundreds of replies and deep
| threaded discussion. The sense of pride I get from being able
| to start a healthy thread without more participation is opposed
| to the jacking of the nervous system dang is reflecting on. In
| some way, it builds my confidence in this community.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Absolutely. And if I feel like it and I have time I can pop
| back into that thread but I rarely find myself becoming
| engaged with it more than once or twice. Unlike some websites
| where I've gone back and forth for days with some moron about
| which one of us is right. ;)
|
| Not having notifications is great.
| imdsm wrote:
| I agree too. I am able to comment and add to a thread without
| feeling like I have to then defend my opinion or go back and
| answer replies. There's no responsibility, in a way, with
| commenting. I can add an anecdote, or ask a rhetorical
| question, or even crack a joke, and then move on with my
| curiosity. It's a good system, and makes it feel very calm
| here.
| imiric wrote:
| What makes a forum interesting IMO is the back and forth
| discussion that sometimes happens, as long as it's
| respectful and productive. If you don't occasionally check
| and answer replies, you'd miss out on the chance of having
| your opinion challenged and having to defend or amend it,
| which is a good opportunity for growth. Otherwise it's akin
| to throwing your thoughts into the well and walking away.
| You might as well do that on Twitter and turn off
| notifications.
|
| I do think HN should have a simple notification system,
| with a configurable period of up to, say, a week after
| posting, and having the ability to mute threads. Just so
| that you don't miss any initial discussion on new posts,
| but without feeling overwhelmed or distracted by posts that
| are no longer news.
| pvg wrote:
| You also "miss the opportunity" to engage in an endless,
| repetitive non-constructive back-and-forth which is much
| more common than a back-and-forth-of-personal-
| intellectual-growth. It's hard to believe notifications
| (rather than, say, deliberate personal interest and
| effort) would help drive the latter while we know for a
| fact they help generate a lot of the former.
| imiric wrote:
| > You also "miss the opportunity" to engage in an
| endless, repetitive non-constructive back-and-forth which
| is much more common than a back-and-forth-of-personal-
| intellectual-growth.
|
| On other forums maybe, but I haven't experienced much of
| that here.
|
| Regardless, this is clearly something _some_ users want,
| so that we can avoid wasting time manually hunting for
| new replies. For those who don't, it can be an optional
| feature and they wouldn't have to use it.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| On other forums maybe, but I haven't experienced
| much of that here.
|
| I agree but surely this is attributable, at least in
| part, to the lack of a notification system?
| pvg wrote:
| Sure but those users have the many options outlined in
| this very thread. There's also 'threads' in the top
| navbar which covers the basic use case reasonably well -
| I'm just mentioning in case you or others missed it, like
| I miss all sorts of weird cryptic HN features after 10+
| years here.
| kodah wrote:
| "threads" is a simple notification system, imo. That's
| how I follow up on discussions. It also naturally ages my
| attention on topics. I'm not going to be responding to
| three day old discussions that I've chosen in one way or
| another to move on from.
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| I'm always pleasantly surprised to show up at the end of the
| day, click through my posts, and see thoughtful replies. I
| rarely have the time to back-and-forth in a thread - push
| notifications would probably just discourage me from ever
| posting. But... seeing some replies or upvotes for something
| I wrote the previous day - that's always a nice "Hey - thanks
| for sharing" that I don't feel compelled to reply to as the
| day has already passed.
| lolsal wrote:
| I also appreciate this.
| skilled wrote:
| I'm pretty sure _upvoting_ a comment is seen as a means to notify
| someone on HN. Maybe it 's only in my head but that's how I see
| it.
| warrenm wrote:
| There's nothing in the HN UI that I've yet noticed that shows
| when a comment is upvoted (or downvoted) beyond the fake
| internet points counter next to my username
|
| Up/down votes are irrelevant, though, in this context: if I've
| asked a question, I shouldn't have to go _hunting_ to find out
| if people replied (or if they 've asked something back, etc)
| skilled wrote:
| I don't write so many comments so I can always keep track of
| everything. Also, HN creates contextual threads for comments,
| the ones involving you, and I haven't had any bad UX to
| report so far. The system in its current form _works_.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| Long ago dang shared with me that reply chain length is
| proportional to the tendency to violate the HN comment
| guidelines. HN is passionate about high quality non-toxic
| discussion.
| greedo wrote:
| You can use an RSS reader to monitor for replies. The URL would
| be something like:
|
| https://hnrss.org/replies?id=greedo
|
| I'm not sure who maintains the site, but it helps me notice
| replies to my comments. And since I only check it once a day or
| so, I don't get too involved with flamewars.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Add me to the camp that is happy there are no notifications.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Its typical that everyone is defending the status quo. I doubt
| the reason it doesn't have that feature is because they are
| against it. I think it's just one of those things that adds a
| significant amount of complexity without a ton of benefit for
| most people. But I also think if they had several developers
| working on the site, they would have done it.
|
| You can just scan down recent threads to see if there are
| replies.
|
| But it's objectively a missing feature that could be somewhat
| useful.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I could be misremembering but think dang really is against it.
| He's a philosophical guy about community management.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Then why did he make https://www.hnreplies.com/ ?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That's Dan Grossman, a community member. dang is Daniel
| Gackle and runs HN.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| My mistake. I don't know what caused me to conflate them
| to begin with.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I actually did too, at one point. :) No idea why either.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| They're both named Dan. Every Dan is a mere simulacrum of
| the original Meta Dan. Your confusion is thus
| understandable.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Dan G! The G is important, all gamma-class Dan's are
| basically the same base model with some aesthetic
| differences
| pbreit wrote:
| Because it would be a total nightmare.
| warrenm wrote:
| What makes you think that?
| warning26 wrote:
| Honestly I'm glad it doesn't.
|
| Reply notifications may increase engagement, but I'd argue they
| reduce the quality of discussion, since such notifications would
| encourage rapid back and forth arguments.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I believe this is also the official reason
| masklinn wrote:
| It mostly does the opposite because it means getting replies
| quickly tapers off. After a few days the odds of keeping up a
| discussion are low, and older discussions are baiscally
| locked out forever.
| criddell wrote:
| Reducing back-and-forth discussions is a feature.
|
| Look at any post that gets a significant number of comments
| and then scroll to pick out the deepest threads. When the
| depth comes from lots of people adding information or
| opinions, the quality is generally pretty high. When the
| depth comes from a small number of people going back-and-
| forth, it's usually not very interesting.
|
| Adding more of the latter type would make HN worse and
| that's what you would get more of if they made HN work more
| like Reddit.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I do agree with that. I wonder if it'd be better to show one's
| threads as a chronological list as opposed to a tree.
| pictur wrote:
| this question is posted 2-3 times a month. and this answer is
| written all the time. and it goes to the top. hn cycles
| account42 wrote:
| They could do delayed notifications. Not having them at all
| sucks because you are pretty much guaranteed not to see replies
| to older comments.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I just remember to check the comments in my profile page and
| see how much my past comments have been replied to.
| sgc wrote:
| I used to do that, but you can just click "threads".
| spyke112 wrote:
| Mind blowing! I had not spotted that feature yet.
| sgc wrote:
| Honestly it's hilarious how much attention this is
| getting. It's a link that took me several years to find.
| It's the second link on the page. And a bunch of IT pros
| are delighted to find it!
|
| Ux is hard. Personally, I had clicked the "comments" link
| and it was not what I was looking for, and then it took a
| moment of curiosity several years later to try again. I
| _think_ the moral of the story is, if you want something
| to be discoverable, don 't hide it behind a less obvious
| naming choice when the more obvious looking choice is
| used nearby. But who knows.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| How does that differ from the "Comments" link in the user
| profile page?
| davidivadavid wrote:
| It's 1 click vs. 2 clicks away.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Oh sweet. Thank you. Unfortunately that's not a thing in
| my mobile client of choice, but handy for when I'm on
| desktop.
| csa wrote:
| > Unfortunately that's not a thing in my mobile client of
| choice, but handy for when I'm on desktop.
|
| Threads are part of the HN home page header when logged
| in.
|
| How does your browsers disable this link? Does it disable
| other header links as well?
| seanw444 wrote:
| I use Glider (from F-Droid) on mobile for browsing HN. On
| desktop, I use the normal website. Thus, the link is
| useful for me when on desktop. It's not a thing in
| Glider.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I use the Threads link to see recent conversations. Replies
| can only come in for two weeks (IIRC), and 99% of replies
| happen within 24 hours, in my experience.
|
| I'm less curious about late replies than I am about late
| upvotes. Sometimes karma ticks upward and I can't figure out
| what people liked. It'd be nice to be able to figure this out
| -- does anyone know if any of the browser plugins offer such
| a functionality?
| topaz0 wrote:
| Aren't comments closed after a couple weeks anyway?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Yes.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _you are pretty much guaranteed not to see replieds to older
| comments._
|
| I consider this a feature, not a bug. IMO, it's good to let
| older conversations just kinda "run out of steam" as
| attention moves elsewhere. In my experience, extended
| discussions here tend to be unproductive flame-war level
| discussion. I don't see any value in making it easier to
| sustain that.
| loceng wrote:
| Maybe a way then to flag a comment to watch for a response?
| Sometimes I ask a question I'd love answered, or if someone
| else responds to a conversation I think is important - I'd
| be happy if they eventually replied.
| ss108 wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| Like, I "owe" people a response here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30310575#30310784
|
| I am trying to put some degree of effort into the answer,
| but it feels like they might not even see my responses to
| their comments.
| loceng wrote:
| Only one of them has contact info in their profile - so
| at least it'd get to them?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tomcam
|
| They thought it'd make a good blog post too, so you can
| repurpose it for that?
| ss108 wrote:
| Yeah, I just don't have a blog LOL
|
| But I have been thinking about making one, maybe this can
| kick it off. Would have to be anonymous until I
| successfully make it back into tech.
| account42 wrote:
| > I consider this a feature, not a bug. IMO, it's good to
| let older conversations just kinda "run out of steam" as
| attention moves elsewhere.
|
| That tends to happen even when there are notifications in
| my experience - it only takes one participant to stop.
|
| > In my experience, extended discussions here tend to be
| unproductive flame-war level discussion.
|
| As in here on HN? That can hardly be due to notifications
| since there are none. I'm also not looking for extended
| discussion, just being able to see if someone has something
| to add to an old comment of mine.
| ben_w wrote:
| > As in here on HN? That can hardly be due to
| notifications since there are none.
|
| I've certainly felt that was happening here a few times.
| I'm glad the "threads" list is so short, because I'm not
| immune to the siren call of https://xkcd.com/386 even
| though my better self wishes I were.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _As in here on HN? That can hardly be due to
| notifications since there are none._
|
| I'm saying notifications would exacerbate those
| situations, which is why it's good that HN doesn't have
| that facility.
| tayo42 wrote:
| Im not sure i agree with that. old forums used to have
| interesting threads that would go on for a while and in
| depth. One thing I dont like about this, idk what this is
| called, new generation of message board?, is that past 3 or
| 4 comments deep everything dies and past like 12 hours
| commenting dies. it actually feels a lot more shallow
| mindcrime wrote:
| I suspect that may be a result of those boards being more
| specifically focused on a particular topic. But, that's
| just a hunch, not something I can prove.
| passivate wrote:
| There are many times I don't reply to a comment that is
| multiple days old simply because nobody is going to read
| it.
|
| In my experience, the "hot takes" are often low quality
| comments. Quality comments take time and thought, and HN
| isn't conducive for that.
| robbiep wrote:
| I've replied to multiple days old comments and been
| replied to in turn. I think when you do this you're not
| performing for an audience but responding to another
| person or couple of people individually. The fact not
| many people are going to see it should be irrelevant - is
| a piece of art (or a notebook doodle) not worth doing
| because it has an audience of one?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This is one of my own frustrations with HN. The issue
| isn't quite as bad as on other discussion sites, but
| generally, conversations ... fade quickly. I'd like to
| see _some_ kind of mechanism which works against this
| tendency.
|
| That said, notifications of themselves ... probably
| aren't that. Though there might be ways to tweak the
| mechanic to induce this.
|
| Google+ had a Notifications dynamic that seemed to work
| well in this effect, though it was somewhat specific to
| how that site was structured:
|
| - Notifications were for specific discussions.
|
| - Disucssions were hosted by a specific user.
|
| - The Notification went out to all (recent-ish)
| participants in the discussion.
|
| - Discussion hosts could moderate the thread. This was a
| two-edged sword, but tended to reduce spam and flamebait
| when used well.
|
| - The Notifications Pane itself wasn't merely a
| "something happened" nag, but a site element where new
| comments could be directly responded to.
|
| - Discussion threads were flat, with most-recent comments
| appearing at the bottom of the thread. I'd at first
| missed the threaded style, but came to appreciate a flat
| disucssion which didn't descend into long separated
| exchanges (frequently flamefests), and for which each
| subsequent response was an equal contribution to the
| thread.
|
| - Total thread length was limited to 500 replies.
|
| It's not the same as a topical or open-discussion formum,
| as with HN. But as a conversation-fostering platform
| _given the right host and participants_ it _could_ and
| often _did_ work quite well.
|
| A result was conversations _which evolved naturally_ over
| days and weeks, sometimes months and years. Conversations
| didn 't simply die.
| fouc wrote:
| I agree about the problem of quality conversations fading
| too quickly.
|
| Perhaps HN could add a /topconversations or
| /yesterdayconversations link that only highlights the
| best conversation threads from 24 hours ago. That way
| attention on good discussions could be maintained for an
| extra day.
| detaro wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front ?
| fouc wrote:
| I meant "conversations" and not posts. Kinda like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments but highlight
| the ones that have the best overall cluster of comments
| in a continuous thread
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's useful, and it's often a good way to browse the
| site --- after a day, assessments on what's significant
| tend to settle out.
|
| That said, it still won't highlight conversations which
| have come back to life.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| I'm more interested in replies to replies to my comments anyway
| most of the time.
| [deleted]
| mFixman wrote:
| The problem is that old discussions become effectively
| invisible.
|
| If I reply to a post or comment that's over several days old
| there's almost no chance the author will ever see it.
| modeless wrote:
| HN is not for directly communicating with single people. HN
| is for conversations with a large community. By commenting
| you can discover and/or influence the collective opinions of
| a large number of people. But that only works while the
| community's attention is on a discussion. Once the community
| moves on, there's no point in continuing a discussion here.
|
| Move 1:1 conversations to another service. Many people put
| contact information in their profiles, and others can often
| be found with a little searching. I've had a few people
| contact me about HN conversations over email and twitter and
| it's been a generally positive experience. Maybe HN should do
| more to encourage people to include contact information in
| their profiles so that this can happen more often.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| As an ccasional replier, that's a plus for me. If I am
| interested in the past, I can go look (and I have done), and
| then reply. Look forward to reading your reply....perhaps in
| a couple of months.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _If I reply to a post or comment that 's over several days
| old there's almost no chance the author will ever see it._
|
| That is a Good Thing.
| warrenm wrote:
| No, it's not
|
| If you ask a question, and I happen to see it a couple days
| later and can answer it, why would you _not_ want to see
| said answer?
| scythe wrote:
| If I actually still need an answer to the question, I'll
| be checking my threads. Otherwise, I'd prefer not to be
| interrupted by someone's nitpicking a point I made about
| wastewater management three days ago or something; it's
| unnecessary stress. I find reddit's reply notifications
| to be a stressful anti-feature, and they're a primary
| reason that reddit is IP-blocked on my work laptop while
| HN is not.
| mindcrime wrote:
| An edge case like that isn't really the point. I mean,
| what percentage of "responses to old comments" fall into
| that bucket? My guess is that it's a very small
| percentage. Weighed against the "propagating /
| encouraging low-value flame wars" possibility, I
| absolutely consider the lack of such notifications to a
| Good Thing.
|
| Especially considering somebody who's _particularly_
| motivated to find delayed answers to specific questions
| can always bookmark the particular comment and check it
| manually, or just occasionally scroll-back through the
| "threads" page or whatever. If they're not motivated
| enough to do that, then maybe the discussion wasn't that
| important to begin with.
| warrenm wrote:
| This isn't an "edge case"
|
| This is the _normal_ case for commenting :: if someone
| replies, it shouldn 't be difficult to find that out
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Because conversations have lifespans. If I want to see
| said answer I can visit my profile and check. But I don't
| want the website constantly pestering me "someone
| responded to that thing you said a week ago!"
|
| If I'm still curious of the answer a few days later I can
| check my profile a few days later
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Some conversations have long lifespans.
|
| Philosophers have been answering, or at least asking, the
| same questions for centuries and millennia. Technical and
| scientific questions can span years or decades. Political
| and social ones, decades and centuries.
|
| No, it's not necessary to drag all of past discourse into
| each individual conversation. But neither is it
| reasonable to demand that _all_ discussions die within a
| few hours, or a day at the outside, on the most perfect
| text-based global communications platform ever developed.
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| Why not make subscribing to a thread manual? You can
| subscribe to a thread of you think it is important. The
| subscription will last for 3-4 days or maybe a week.
| Someone will probably make a client that automatically
| subscribes you to your comments. But that will probably
| be a vanishingly small number of users. And flame wars
| would require both sides of the war to have their
| subscription on. The notifications themselves can be
| delayed too, so you can either manually follow it to stay
| fully up to date or deal with a few minutes or hours of
| delays.
|
| Basically too inconvenient for a troll, but usable for
| most probably productive purposes.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| I wish it had something like a reply counter. I understand that
| creating and maintaining a notification system is not ideal. But
| if there is a counter for the number of replies I've gotten, and
| the number is larger than yesterday, then I know I have to check
| my comment history.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| This is my biggest beef with HN, along with the presence of
| up/downvote buttons.
| foolinaround wrote:
| i think this feature is needed. Often times, an insightful reply
| to a question is asked (others want to see it too) but the OP
| just may not have noticed it.
|
| so, maybe 8 hours later, if there is no response from OP for a
| reply made, a notification is sent? OP may choose to ignore of
| course.
| onion2k wrote:
| One of the really good things about HN is the Algolia integration
| so building things like a notifier relatively easy. The structure
| of the data means you can do a lot. The HTML of the pages is old-
| school enough that rewriting it with a browser plugin is
| straightforward too. HN is "hackable" in the classic sense of the
| word. You can build your own things on top of it.
|
| It doesn't need extra features if they just read data and do
| things when stuff changes - you can do that yourself.
| warrenm wrote:
| >You can build your own things on top of it. It doesn't need
| extra features if they just read data and do things when stuff
| changes - you can do that yourself.
|
| I'm sure I "could" do that myself - but why waste my time when
| it's something so incredibly trivial to add to the site so
| _everyone_ benefits?
|
| Intentionally breaking the pattern of internet fora by
| withholding this feature seems ...
| onion2k wrote:
| _Intentionally breaking the pattern of internet fora by
| withholding this feature seems_
|
| Saying that the HN devs are "withholding" a feature implies
| that you think you're entitled to their development time, QA
| time, support, etc. You aren't.
| ww520 wrote:
| Please don't add notification for replies. It will ruin the site.
| It will have a lot more garbage replies when people are compelled
| to reply due to gamification. It will make moderation more
| difficult. Not worth it.
| g42gregory wrote:
| I am very grateful that HN does not have alert notifications. It
| sets it clearly apart from the social networks and positions it
| as a useful tool to learn information.
| rgoulter wrote:
| I do think "upvoted old comments" would be worth notifying about
| after some cooling duration.
|
| I'll sometimes see I got upvoted, and I'll notice it wasn't one
| of my recent comments (since my recent comments will all be 1
| karma).
|
| If the feedback loop between knowing a comment was upvoted is
| short, sure, that encourages trying to get upvotes (rather than
| trying to make good discussion). But I think it'd be good to see
| what old comments I wrote people thought were worth upvoting.
| warrenm wrote:
| I don't so much care about something being upvoted (it's all
| fake internet points anyway), but knowing when someone comments
| back would be quite valuable
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| I'm using HACK app, that send you push notifications for reply:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...
| gandalfian wrote:
| And how to sort comments by date order so you can easily see
| what's been posted new since you last read a topic.
| donohoe wrote:
| I am not sure I would want this by default.
|
| I would like an opt-in setting where if I made a top-level
| comment I get notified if any of the following are true:
|
| - My Comment is upvoted 5 times and I get a Reply. - A Reply to
| my Comment on it is upvoted 5 times. - I receive more than 3
| Replies.
| u801e wrote:
| Being able to distinguish new replies from existing replies in a
| comment thread is something that would be useful. On Reddit, you
| can get that if you're a moderator or have a gold subscription.
|
| News and email clients would highlight new messages you just
| downloaded. What would be nice is if Hackernews would do
| something similar. For example, using the e tag header to decide
| which comments are rendered differently so that it's easy to see
| that they're new comments since the page was last viewed.
| civilized wrote:
| I love that they don't change anything. Social media services
| like Reddit that change things eventually change into shit.
| shafyy wrote:
| Last night I had a dream that HN had a new UI. Time to spend
| less time on HN.
| dang wrote:
| What did it look like?
| pvg wrote:
| Mildly related but your love of 'illusion' like here
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30367395
|
| makes me think of this (possibly too glamorous) video of
| how I imagine HN moderation goes:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY4cVhXxW64
| lolinder wrote:
| They don't change nothing, but they're _very_ careful when they
| introduce a change. Most are so subtle you wouldn 't notice,
| and that's the point.
|
| Some in recent memory I can think of:
|
| * prev/next/parent links
|
| * Show HN can now have both a text body and a link (they used
| to only have a link and you had to submit a reply with your
| explanation)
| krapp wrote:
| >Most are so subtle you wouldn't notice, and that's the
| point.
|
| That can't be the point. There's no reason to introduce new
| features with the expectation that no one will ever notice or
| use them. Honestly, I think this forum cargo-cults its
| "minimalist" aesthetic far too much.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| Obviously GP comment is saying you don't notice because the
| changes integrate so well into the existing system, not
| saying it's desirable for users to literally not notice the
| features. Otherwise the maintainers of HN are morons
| introducing features that no one will use.
|
| Honestly... nitpicking comments with some dumb hyper-
| literal interpretation to find something tiny and pointless
| to disagree about is an aspect of HN I could do without.
| krapp wrote:
| > Obviously he's saying you don't notice because the
| changes integrate so well into the existing system.
|
| Yes, to the point that people literally never notice
| them, which is (or should be considered) a problem.
| People still complain that HN lacks thread folding, even
| though the feature's been deployed for months. They don't
| see the links or never bother clicking them. People have
| been here for years and never noticed the site has a
| footer with links to other features.
|
| That's not a feature of elegant integration, it's the
| fault of a purposely obscurant layout.
|
| >Nitpicking comments to find something tiny and pointless
| to disagree about is an aspect of HN I could do without.
|
| As is the assumption that all criticism of HN and its
| features is pointless nitpicking. Be less defensive.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| > People still complain that HN lacks thread folding,
| even though the feature's been deployed for months.
|
| how many people complain versus how many complained
| before the feature was introduced? That some people don't
| notice a change means not so much.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I'm constantly tapping these prev/next links while browsing
| on my phone, when I try to tap the collapse [-].
| Cd00d wrote:
| Lol - I never noticed the parent/prev/next links.
|
| That parent one is super useful! Sometimes I go too deep in a
| discussion and realize I don't want to be there but can't
| find my way back easily by eyeballing the indent depth of the
| comments.
|
| Thanks for the lesson!
| masklinn wrote:
| > Most are so subtle you wouldn't notice
|
| I certainly notice every time I fat finger these useless
| links.
| ggambetta wrote:
| I find them very useful. Whenever I've gone deep enough in
| a comment thread, I use the "parent" link to navigate to
| its root, and then I either collapse it or use the "next"
| link to read the next thread.
| warrenm wrote:
| case in point: I asked this question ~1 hour ago, it's garnered
| (as of this comment) 78 comments, and yet I had to go _hunting_
| for it when I got back to HN
| scythe wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=warrenm
|
| The link is not in the topbar but it's easy to find in your
| profile.
| warrenm wrote:
| thanks for proving my point: I had to go hunting for this
| submission just to see if anyone had replied/answered
|
| And no one has (as of 1133 EST 17-Feb-2022) provided a real
| answer for why HN has such an obvious feature missing :)
| [deleted]
| pHollda wrote:
| It's the same reason dang needs to manually tell people
| about 'more' in long threads, or repost previous discussion
| of the same topic. That was the initial design and no one
| wants to make new changes because of an absurd idealization
| of that design.
|
| No one wants to rethink old decisions made a long time ago
| and genuinely wonder if things need to change. Hence people
| come up with bullshit defences.
| dang wrote:
| 'more' links for long threads wasn't HN's initial design.
| It's a performance workaround and therefore bs in its own
| right. I'm slowly making progress on a reimplementation
| of Arc, which will hopefully allow this to go away.
| scythe wrote:
| >And no one has (as of 1133 EST 17-Feb-2022) provided a
| real answer for why HN has such an obvious feature missing
| :)
|
| This kind of reply is exactly the reason I'm glad that HN
| does not have reply notifications. At least a dozen people
| have clearly explained that they prefer HN _without_ reply
| notifications, but you 're here offering a troll-ish claim
| of "no real answer" with a correspondingly sarcastic
| emoticon.
| warrenm wrote:
| If HN functioned like a _normal_ internet forum, ie it
| had reply notifications, then if /when someone actually
| posted why HN has intentionally decided to break the
| pattern would've popped up as something findable
|
| But no one had (as of when I commented)
| solarmist wrote:
| I agree with the reasoning not to have notifications mentioned
| here.
|
| However, a related request would be an easy way to identify new
| comments on a conversation thread when you're on the threads
| page. Is that something that can be done?
|
| If I have an active day on HN it can be difficult to determine
| which comments I've read and won't reply to from new comments I'd
| like to reply to.
| jb1991 wrote:
| there's this: https://www.hnreplies.com I understand it is built
| by an HN moderator, actually, so somewhat endorsed.
| samanator wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. Signed up!
| ashtuchkin wrote:
| Amazing how simple it is! Kudos to the author, subscribed.
| consumer451 wrote:
| also this chrome extension was mentioned 10 months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590720
| pvg wrote:
| that thing steals your session cookie without much asking or
| explaining
| consumer451 wrote:
| Ooof, sorry for posting it then. Would delete or edit if I
| could.
| pvg wrote:
| I don't there's anything deliberately evil about it, it
| just happens to be effectively credentials harvesting -
| your auth cookie ends up on someone else's server. If
| they get compromised, all those HN accounts get
| compromised. Some people might be ok with that risk, if
| aware of it.
| kevincox wrote:
| I use hnreplies and quite like it. Another option is
| https://hnrss.github.io/#reply-feeds which gives you a feed of
| replies to a user (quite possibly yourself). The RSS option is
| of course more flexible because you can do whatever you want
| with the feed but I just read my RSS via email anyways so I
| just use hnreplies. IIUC it is also faster because it is
| polling for everyone quite frequently whereas individually
| polling the RSS feed I would probably do it at a lower
| interval.
| tptacek wrote:
| I believe Dan Gackle is the only public HN moderator, and that
| this isn't really endorsed.
| jb1991 wrote:
| and I believe that Dan created the site in question, which is
| sorta an endorsement of sorts:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27555072
| tptacek wrote:
| Different Dan.
| OJFord wrote:
| And Scott 'sctb' Bell. Don't think he comments as much though
| (at least, that I notice/in threads I read). (Oh or
| actually.. not active since 2019? Maybe you're right.)
| Tomte wrote:
| Scott left some time ago.
| dang wrote:
| It was built by a different Dan G. but I'm happy to somewhat
| endorse it.
| golergka wrote:
| I did a telegram bot for this at some point, but it ended up very
| annoying and I just abandoned the project. Code is here if you
| want it: https://github.com/golergka/hn-comment-bot
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Like the other comments, I also feel that would be a bad idea. I
| have seen, like, two of my submissions hitting the home page. I
| then jump in and start commenting. It is all over the place and I
| would NOT want any notifications for that frenzy.
|
| Most of the times, I just quietly read the comments and try to
| converse where it makes sense -- either I'm getting something or
| giving something in return.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| If alerts were an optional feature of HN, I would use them.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I just click on the Threads to see what happened to something I
| wrote. I like that it is minimalist. I think it invites a more
| considered approach to what I write.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I used https://hnrss.github.io/ for a while. I worked really well
| but I eventually realized I didn't want it.
| bitlax wrote:
| There's an API. Go nuts.
| MeneerFriet wrote:
| Not exactly what you're asking but I made a Safari extension
| (iOS/Mac) to highlights new comments:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hn-comments/id1602932281
|
| A whopping 5 downloads so far. :p
| sbayeta wrote:
| I'm not on safari (or Mac), so I can't try it. But what I
| usually do is collapse the comments I already read, and when I
| check the thread later, I can distinguish new (or previously
| unread) comments.
| ravenstine wrote:
| If I see my karma go up, that usually tells me that someone may
| have replied to something I said. Otherwise, I'm glad there's no
| alert for new replies. Conversation should be intentional. If I'm
| gonna be reading what someone said in response to me, I better
| already have enough motivation to check back and see if someone
| replied. When I don't check back, it's probably because I've got
| something more important to focus my attention on, and when I
| reply to someone I assume there's only a small chance they'll
| actually see it or reply back.
|
| An extension to alert for replies to _recent_ comments
| /submissions could be really easy to make, though. Just check
| `/threads?id=` every few minutes, compare the content of the
| previous page snapshot, and collect unique replies into a set.
| ballenf wrote:
| I use a custom style sheet to hide my karma score (except on
| user profile page where I can go if I'm super curious). It's
| broke an unhealthy cycle I would subconsciously try to craft
| the perfect reply and get an addiction-inducing high from some
| big karma boost. Or big productivity-killing negative response.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yeah, I can imagine that'd be good for many people. I get no
| thrill out of my karma. To me it's just a signal that
| something I said got attention and that I might want to
| quickly glance at my comments page in case there's an
| opportunity to engage with someone. The number itself is
| pretty meaningless and doesn't drive me to HN.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This is a feature I would like to be built-in. Seeing the
| karma score move makes me go look. It is an unhealthy
| distraction for me.
|
| I guess I should learn how to build that custom style sheet
| myself. Unless you can share yours here? ;-)
| BbzzbB wrote:
| uBlock Origin filters are good for this. I also hide scores
| on Reddit and likes on Twitter in an attempt to not be
| influenced by what the mob thinks of comment X as well as the
| reason you mentioned. Unfortunately, it is one click away to
| un-hide so that second intent is mostly a failure, I end up
| checking anyway.
| exikyut wrote:
| Same here! Down to a T. I actually think the consideration to
| hide it came from the fact that everyone *else's* votes are
| hidden.
|
| Incidentally, rather than a custom style sheet to hide the
| score, I have the entire top bar set to the karma color. This
| means I cannot see any of the actual links, and I have to
| _really_ squint at the screen and hunt for them. Long-tail
| accessibility issues seem part of HN 's brand, or something
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've had an ... interesting ... experience having made the
| Leaders page, and at one point suggested to dang that the
| feature might be removed.
|
| I later heard from someone else who'd made the list and had
| somewhat similar responses to it.
|
| HN reduces gamification in most respects, but not all, and
| even in the ones that remain the psychological impacts are
| interesting.
|
| Yesterday's Black Bar for example. It's a subtle note, but I
| immediately knew what it meant (and that there would be
| inevitable questions about its meaning).
| karaterobot wrote:
| Me too, as of a month or so ago. So far it has been an
| improvement in my experience with HN. I wouldn't mind this
| being a toggle on the configuration screen.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have thought for some time that votes should come in two
| flavors. X if you make a comment, X/10 if you don't. Drive-by
| voting is of little value, and for abusive posts that need
| downvoting we have flagging to accomplish quick removal. Giving
| more weight to people who write a reply would encourage more
| conversation.
|
| Of course, then there is a question of whether it would
| encourage more _thoughtful_ comments or not, and I cannot
| answer that.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Collaborative filtering ... has issues. Most simple or
| single-factor fixes don't address the larger problems.
|
| Much of the time, it tends to amplify interesting, and
| diminish nonproductive contributions. Spam, trolling,
| clickbait, and vacuous responses seem to get quickly
| downvoted and flagged on HN, which is good. Comment voting
| has numerous other connotations, however.
|
| - Simple and short expressions tend to be disproportionately
| upvoted. They're easier to assess. _Sometimes_ they are
| insightful, most often, only tapping a common sentiment.
|
| - Controversial views tend to be downvoted. Sometimes
| controversy is flamebait, sometimes it isn't. There's not
| much distinction made between the two.
|
| - Truth isn't a popularity contest. HN often, but not always,
| avoids this trap. True expertise in complex topics is rare,
| but at times necessary. An epistemic system should reflect
| this to a greater extent (though also be aware of misuses of
| such claims of expertise or authority).
|
| - Topics strongly shaped by remunerative interests,
| ideological alignments, and tribal allegiances tend to
| perform most poorly under popular voting systems. There is a
| List of Things HN Cannot Discuss, and most of these seem to
| fall under this umbrella. Dang has voiced frustration with
| this on occasion, and I've had numerous email discussions
| with him about this ... more in the past than recently, I
| think. HN is guided to an extent by its moderator team. It is
| not directly steered by them. And the overall philosophy is
| broader than critics of the principle current political
| tribes seem to admit.
|
| Collaborative filtering / the wisdom of crowds was all the
| rage in the late 1990s / early 2000s. Whilst it has _some_
| uses, there 's been an overreliance on it.
|
| I'm not entirely sure how best to patch the system, though I
| have some thoughts.
|
| - Bounding ratings to a range rather than a simple sum seems
| more useful.
|
| - Weighting individual's ratings by their own assigned mean
| similarly. If someone _always_ hands out 5s (on a 1--5
| scale), then those are re-scaled to a median score. Rescaling
| _ranges_ similarly: someone offering only 1s and 5s might see
| that rescaled to 2 & 4 repectively.
|
| - Factoring in expertise, or rescaling based on other factors
| such as truth, tone, conciseness, accuracy, references, etc.,
| _might_ help. Goodhart 's law applies. But sometimes, what
| you want isn't the average opinion of the passengers, but a
| competent pilot.
|
| Another point is that HN doesn't aim _simply_ to be a place
| where truth is sought, but a conversational platform.
| Excessive strictness would probably diminish this.
| warrenm wrote:
| Social voting is broken - and probably shouldn't exist
| (https://antipaucity.com/2015/09/16/like-problems-social-
| voti...)
|
| That said, I'm not asking for notifications on upvotes (like
| Stack Overflow does)
|
| I'm asking for the basic functionality of all internet fora
| I've interacted with for the last close to 30 years that tell
| you if you have any replies
| ziggus wrote:
| HN isn't a forum.
| warrenm wrote:
| ...says the person _replying_ to a comment ;)
| ziggus wrote:
| Allowing comments on a news aggregator doesn't mean it's
| a forum. The fact that HN purposely doesn't have much of
| the standard functionality of a forum should clue you in
| to the fact that it isn't one.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > If I see my karma go up, that usually tells me that someone
| may have replied to something I said.
|
| Same, in my profile I ask to upvote if replying to start a
| discussion. Simple and does the job of catching my attention.
| nottorp wrote:
| Because HN is a non profit thing that doesn't make money on
| "engagement".
|
| Seriously, you don't have enough interruptions?
|
| If you really want to see if your comments have been replied to,
| you can see that in the list of your comments.
| klez wrote:
| I don't think they're asking for notifications. Even just an
| icon next to my profile name to indicate someone has responded
| to a comment would be something. And make it opt-in since a lot
| of people here seem to be happy with the status quo.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| This is still a notification, even if it's not using the
| browser notifications or mobile push notifications.
| klez wrote:
| > Seriously, you don't have enough interruptions?
|
| I was responding to this. That kind of notification won't
| interrupt me like, say, my phone vibrating or a desktop
| notification.
| warrenm wrote:
| Or an ability to sort my comments/submissions by most-recent
| comment/reply
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I think its a fantastic UX decision. If you care about a
| discussion you're having you'll check your replies. Telling you
| someone replied to you encourages lazy responses.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| I get mine from https://hnnotify.xyz/ - seems to work well.
|
| I agree that it would be nice for HN to manage this directly.
| enobrev wrote:
| I've also been using https://hnnotify.xyz/
|
| Works great
| hooande wrote:
| great app, thanks! glad that a skilled hacker could solve this
| problem
| smoldesu wrote:
| This has probably already been brought up in this thread, but you
| can track responses to your replies via the unofficial HN API.
| tzs wrote:
| OT: how come links in HN text submissions are sometimes clickable
| and sometimes not?
|
| Example of an HN text submission where links are clickable:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30345201
| dang wrote:
| The default is not, as explained in the FAQ:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. But we turn them on
| whenever we see a case that isn't abusive. I don't know of a
| way to automate that.
| einarvollset wrote:
| For the same reason PG proposed turning HN off "during office
| hours" several years back
| bannedbybros wrote:
| WithinReason wrote:
| It's a filter, and it works very well. If you're tech savvy you
| can figure it out for yourself, if you're not then what are you
| doing on HN?
|
| Here is your latest reply RSS feed:
| https://hnrss.org/replies?id=warrenm
| pbbbt wrote:
| There are people from different types of technical (or not!)
| backgrounds in all stages of their careers here. Your litmus
| test for who is correctly "on HN" seems unnecessarily
| exclusionary. I'm not sure if you meant it to come across like
| that.
| WithinReason wrote:
| It probably did come out wrong. The point is that those
| people need to have enough motivation to stay and put up with
| the difficulty of using the site. This might seem counter-
| intuitive, but I'm convinced the quality of discussions can
| be proportional to the user hostility of the website :). See
| Reddit, Facebook, etc.
|
| An automated mechanism of getting instant replies would
| create flame wars much more easily too.
| warrenm wrote:
| So ... now I need to use an _external_ tool for something that
| 's intentionally-lacking on the main site?
|
| no thanks :)
| WithinReason wrote:
| No problem :) As I said in a parallel reply, people not
| knowing when they get a response improves the discussion
| quality here.
| warrenm wrote:
| _In your opinion_ not knowing when a response occurs
| improves "discussion quality"
|
| Objectively, it _reduces_ the opportunity for "discussion"
| - since you don't know someone is actually _having_ a
| "discussion" (or trying to have one) with you
|
| Whether that correlates to better or worse "quality" is
| _highly_ debatable :)
| cirrus3 wrote:
| From replies, it seems that most people prefer it that
| way, so I wouldn't say it is _highly_ debatable. It
| appears to be different from your preference and that's
| about all.
| mettamage wrote:
| I feel with HN. If you want specific behavior, program for it.
| When you're done, preferably don't publish the code, so that it
| can easily take the extra few requests that you're making ;-)
| mxstbr wrote:
| I've been using this Chrome extension for a while and it's worked
| really well for me:
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-notifi...
|
| They recently tweeted
|
| > In the last 30 days, Hacker News users sent out 337,875
| comments, responding to 29,258 users.
|
| https://twitter.com/magicbell_io/status/1488441548857561095
| CyberShadow wrote:
| This extension is closed-source and its code is obfuscated. It
| also phones home according to the Firefox permissions. I'm not
| sure I would trust it.
|
| Edit: more information in the HN announcement:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590720
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Why doesn't HN do a lot of things? HN tries to be minimalistic,
| and a lot of people are happy with that (me included).
| phatbyte wrote:
| No thanks.
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