[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you keep up with replies to comment t...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: How do you keep up with replies to comment threads on HN?
Hi HN aficionados, I was wondering if anyone has a good system for
keeping track of replies to comments you posted on HN. As far as I
am aware, HN doesn't offer any type of notification mechanism that
would include notifications for replies to your comment (it would
also be nice to be able to subscribe to all comments for certain
posts). The lack of a notification mechanism means you need to
manually monitor your comments page and see if there were replies.
I was curious if anyone has a good solution to this.
Author : cebert
Score : 54 points
Date : 2022-04-10 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
| 3qz wrote:
| If it was actually important then you wouldn't need notifications
| xyst wrote:
| I usually just don't. The UX is just terrible. Sometimes I get a
| reply while still browsing the same thread and will respond but
| otherwise don't bother to check.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| https://hnreplies.com is built and maintained by @dangrossman and
| sends you an email every time you get a reply
| kbenson wrote:
| This is what I use, and honestly it (and other systems like it)
| is the only thing that allows some conversations to progress if
| someone doesn't reply for hours or a day, depending on how much
| I've been commenting. I've had a random reply to a comment of
| mine that came in a week later yield a useful conversation.
|
| It also means I can just ignore HN for longer periods even if I
| really want to know if there's been movement in a discussion
| I've been having. Seeing if there's an email present is less
| distracting and time consuming than reading through my threads.
| simonw wrote:
| For replies to my own comments, I use the "threads" link.
|
| I use https://f5bot.com/ to get an email when one of my projects
| is mentioned here.
|
| For tracking threads where I want to see every comment, I wrote a
| little tool called hacker-news-to-sqlite which I can run against
| a thread ID to populate a SQLite database with all of the
| replies. Then I can sort by created date descending to see the
| most recent at the top: https://datasette.io/tools/hacker-news-
| to-sqlite
| falafelite wrote:
| Thanks for sharing f5bot, that is a wonderful service to learn
| about. Exactly what I was looking for!
| stevenicr wrote:
| This is interesting in that it seems it may be possible to
| download all of my comments from all threads and put into
| sqlite and then be able to search for old comments without have
| to go scroll page by page, click more - ctr0f - scroll - more
| repeat.. going to have to try this!
| [deleted]
| ganzuul wrote:
| My solution is to not bikeshed. Talk about things which are of
| interest to you and don't dig after what might get you upvotes.
|
| As long as you are polite and don't expose anyone's fragile ego
| you occasionally have an interesting discussion.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I just glance in threads every once in a while and respond if I
| feel like it. HN will rate limit you sometimes so it disengages
| me from flamewar style threads - which seems like the intention.
| Rate limiting makes you take time to think about what you want to
| actually say or even say anything at all. Overall, I think the UX
| is "bad by design" because they don't want this place to be like
| Reddit and Twitter which is just toxic and exhausting.
| manx wrote:
| https://hnnotify.xyz/
| bastijn wrote:
| Happy user of Hnnotify.xyz for over 3 years now. Simple yet
| effective.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| There are a bunch of these services. I use
| https://hnreplies.com
| WithinReason wrote:
| https://hnrss.org/
| mountainriver wrote:
| So there are solutions but understand this was done by design.
| The HN creators fee that back and forth comments can rapidly
| degrade into a war or words. This appears to be very true if you
| look at Reddit.
|
| Initially I hated this, now I love it
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Bad for discussions though.
|
| I've often posted questions, gotten good replies I wanted to
| follow up on, but didn't realize until weeks later when the
| thread was stale. I usually take discussions to message boards
| with basic UX like content notifications.
| nosianu wrote:
| What I do is, for the few threads where I think it's useful,
| I keep a browser tab open with only the specific thread I
| want to watch (click on a comment's timestamp to open only
| the thread below that comment).
|
| Alternatively, you can use the second menu item "Threads" for
| an easy overview over all your comment threads including
| replies to your comments.
|
| This also has the advantage over notifications that _you_
| decide when to look at the discussion, instead of waiting for
| notifications (immediate discussion thread notifications - a
| great evil of our time).
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I've definitely benefitted from the slower pacing.
|
| I'm embarrassed to admit the number of times I was about to go
| off half-cocked because I hadn't taken the time to carefully
| read a comment and/or to just calm down.
| jraph wrote:
| On HN, there is a good chance that someone else may and will
| answer a reply to one of your comments. It is good enough for
| me. I feel like the lack of notification encourages that.
| yardstick wrote:
| This. Embrace the quiet!
|
| Was strange at first to me too but makes a lot of sense and I
| appreciate HN not consuming more of my time and adversely
| impacting my mental health because of it.
| ratww wrote:
| Yep. Same here. I also check the first page of my profile's
| "comments" page a few minutes after replying something, but
| that's it. Probably a bad habit. (I just discovered now that
| the "threads" link on the top also does that, lol).
|
| Recently I've even been considering using a client stylesheet
| to hide my karma at the top of the page.
| andai wrote:
| Yeah my karma is the first thing I look at involuntarily even
| though it's not something I _want_ to care about. I feel sad
| when a comment doesn 't get any attention, and an irrational
| amount of excitement when I get a couple dozen upvotes, even
| though I know it's largely a factor of timing (ending up near
| the top of the page) and sharing popular opinions.
| ahofmann wrote:
| Well, now I had to upvote your post, because I know, that
| you will feel good about it.
| chillacy wrote:
| That sums up my experience as well. I just spent 20 mins
| trying to make that go away in Safari, I was not able to
| get Tampermonkey working (possibly due to XSS headers) but
| Cascadea worked. `#karma { display: none !important; }`
| nishs wrote:
| Safari also has a built-in mechanism to achieve this. In
| Preferences > Advanced > Style sheet, you can pick a
| custom style sheet file for style overrides.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| Feedback feels important to me.
|
| Internally, for me it's nice to make a distinction between
| when I a writing for others and when I am writing for
| myself.
|
| If I am writing for myself, which I often do, it's much
| like my musical busking practice: I am not doing it for the
| money or attention, but just because it adds a nice public
| layer where I feel like I should respect at least some
| social norms. That addition of a lightweight ruleset feels
| helpful to me: instead of just eliding over the parts of my
| thoughts that might not make sense to other people, I am
| forced to at least notate them in some way.
|
| If I am writing for other people, then it's nice to know
| how something was received; I really am often curious about
| what others think.
|
| Getting feedback in this fashion has led me to shut up when
| I have an unpopular opinion, but even that's a really good
| thing to know.
|
| It has been helpful to see the couple of points where I
| wasn't sure how my opinions would be taken, and to then
| either be taken to task for writing unclearly, find a real
| problem in my own thinking, or to at least have a chance to
| gather the wrong-headed arguments people may fall into when
| confronted with some of my thoughts.
|
| And if I am indeed writing for other people and no one is
| upvoting, than that's good to know as well-- there is
| literally no point for me to write something for other
| people which is completely ignored. That's a good indicator
| about when I am just writing for myself-- which is almost
| everything I write and then publish as a comment on HN.
|
| So, to answer the OP, I just check my comments and if there
| is a response in the top couple I may respond back. But if
| folks are writing replies to my very old comments I, I am
| not checking those because I'm guessing they are just
| writing for themselves.
| ratww wrote:
| I feel like the feedback from karma is not really good.
|
| Anything matching the opinion of some echo-chamber can
| get hundreds of points (be it purely factual, opinion or
| even being devoid of content). Mildly unpopular opinions,
| aka "hot takes", the cathartic stuff, can also garner a
| lot more upvotes. However, curious civil discussion or
| sourced posts clarifying something non-controversial
| won't get much attention at all. Because it's boring.
| Maybe that's alright, though.
|
| The only part where I see karma working as feedback is in
| possible flame wars. Anything controversial will get lots
| of downvotes. So it accidentally work as a deterrent I
| guess.
| godelski wrote:
| This is what I do. Look for karma change, then click
| comments. It also makes me more conscious about voting
| since I do want to indicate to the other person that their
| comment was meaningful. Which I like HN's voting system and
| lack of displaying numbers next to other users comments. I
| think a lot of subtle things HN does encourages more
| engaged discussions and less heated battles.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I just click "threads" every now and then and scroll through and
| see if there are any replies to read, or that I would want to
| reply to in turn.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The threads are collapsible in the threads UI, so I keep them
| collapsed and if there is something with > 1 child comments, I
| check it out. Probably more than I should, but enough that some
| time has passed and I can look back at it more objectively.
|
| The serendipity of the site is that I can forget I made a comment
| and find someone has responded to it later on. A few of mine even
| blew up into long threads after I had forgotten them, and it was
| nicer to read the discussion by other people than to be
| responding to it. The slow/calm design aspect of it helps to
| refine my writing into something I can look back on without
| cringing too much. The low-notifications aspect of the site is a
| very nuanced feature.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Fire and forget.
|
| It actually bothers me to know that I can find links back to my
| comments. That can only lead to reaction comments due to
| butthurt. No good.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I don't. Keeping up with comment threads is something I do at
| work, not in my free time.
| meristohm wrote:
| When I'm feeling brave, curious, calm, not anxious, and generous
| with my time, I'll click on "comments". This doesn't happen very
| often. I try to leave self-contained comments that add to the
| asynchronous conversation (collection of thoughts around the
| topic, anyway), understanding that what I submit will be here
| indefinitely and is searchable. Hacker News is the only digital
| social media platform I participate in on a regular basis, and
| even then I try to let some days pass between engagement. My
| reaction to spending time on Facebook and Twitter and Reddit was
| anxiety, so I've gone back to mostly reading books to learn from
| other people, sometimes inspired by HN comments--thank you all!
|
| I appreciate the friction that limits runaway back-and-forth
| conversations with internet strangers; it promotes in me more
| consideration of what people are writing here, because I am more
| free to notice what I'm feeling and decide what to do next.
| leros wrote:
| I just look at the threads tab every day. Or more often if I'm
| engaged in a responsive thread.
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| What I try to do is upvote whatever I'm replying to so that it at
| least can sort of act like a notification through karma.
| pm2222 wrote:
| Try "threads" next to "new".
| cebert wrote:
| Thanks! It never occurred to me to leverage that, but is closer
| to what I was looking for.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| What else would you even use it for?
| pugworthy wrote:
| I don't. In fact to keep some sanity I only login to comment,
| then log back out. I found myself being too karma obsessive,
| annoyed if down-voted, etc.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| For replies to my own posts, I go to the "threads" page.
|
| For replies to others' posts, I keep tabs open for a few days and
| manually refresh.
| DougMellon wrote:
| I have subscribed to the RSS feed of responses to my comments.
| kgwxd wrote:
| https://hnrss.github.io/
| MeneerFriet wrote:
| I made a Safari extension (iOS/Mac) that highlights new comments:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hn-comments/id1602932281 It's for
| new comments in general though, not exactly what you're asking.
|
| Not much interest so far. Maybe the price is too high? Since I
| made it primarily for myself there's at least one happy user.
| cebert wrote:
| It may just be a discovery issue. I hadn't heard of your app
| before you mentioned it here.
| donatj wrote:
| Honestly I try not to. It's better for my mental health just to
| comment and leave it. I'm not perfect at this but I'm working on
| it.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Same. Usually just comment and dip out, unless I had asked a
| question or the thread was pertaining to resourceful
| information.
|
| Occasionally will check up hours or even days later, but not
| usually.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-10 23:02 UTC)