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Comment by fsavard | Hacker News Reader

I don't often comment on HN and this (the short-timed nature of discussions) is one of the main reasons. The other main reason is that I have a high threshold for considering my participation is worthy of other people's attention.

More often then not, when that threshold is crossed, I realize I'm too late and my post will just sit there, unread.

Aren't there others who think it'd be great to have a "sticky" or "follow" button, in essence signalling "I'm going to follow this discussion for a few days / weeks, because I'm genuinely interested"?

Also if there was a way to easily "suscribe" to a thread (email alerts) that'd help. (Someone mentioned hnreplies.com in a sibling comment, never tried it, but I'll check it out)

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> The other main reason is that I have a high threshold for considering my participation is worthy of other people's attention.

This is one of the problems with online conversations in general. Person A makes a lot of low effort comments without putting much thought into it and without bothering to check the accuracy of what they're writing. Person B thinks about whether or not they have anything to add to the conversation, spends time thinking about other people's comments, checks any claims they make to see if they're accurate, rewrites their comment so that it flows better, etc. Person A is going to end up making many, many more comments than Person B. The conversation will look more and more like Person A's posts, even when those people are in the minority.

There are some places that suffer more from this than others, but I think it affects just about every online conversation to some extent. It would be interesting to see what effect posting limits would have.

You're right about that. It might be that I suffer from a "person B" problem :)

However I still think that the "short-lived" nature of discussions here is a relatively independent problem. I think integrating a way to "subscribe to a story" with email alerts on HN itself (rather than independent apps like hnreplies.com), and _displaying_ the number of people who did subscribe, would pave the way for longer-lived discussions. By seeing the number of people who did "subscribe to the story" you'd know whether or not it's still worth posting a comment even though it's been a day or two.

Maybe that's the reason forums have longer-lived discussions. You can easily get alerts when there are new posts in a discussion where you've posted.

It would be interesting if someone started a HN News discussion forum where people could continue the conversations that start here. That would at least help alleviate the problem of feeling pressure to respond to stories and comments rapidly, even if the other issues involved in online discussions (like the "Person A/Person B" one) remain.

In general I wish there was more attention paid to the way different platforms shape our conversations, and more interest in exploring alternative platforms.

I like the idea of a "discussion forum where people could continue the conversations that start here" (at HN).

Some discussions (not all :) that arise on HN are rich and deep, with intelligent people exploring the topic, often someone with expertise/experience/domain knowledge will pitch in to inform the rest - and I haven't found many places on the Web where such discussions happen regularly.

It's a pity sometimes when such a discussion gets swept away in the timeline, simply archived, rather than continuing it over a longer-term, to really have a chance to think deeply and collectively.

You could have a greasemonkey script that puts a 'continue this discussion on [site]' button and then auto-cross post on a click. Even also put auto put a comment in that says 'I'd like to continue this on [site], please join me there'.

For all that G+ is a horrible service, the fact that commenting on a post is effectively a subscription to that post has been among its more attractive elements. If the moderator of that post kicks crap (spam, shitposts) to the curb.

It's lead to the convention of "/sub" (or as I prefer, "/surveil") as an indicator of interest.

But a good conversation can remain alive for days, weeks, months, or even years.

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