Ask HN: Can I see the most recent comments sent to me? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can I see the most recent comments sent to me?

13 pointscodingclaws23 comments

Let's say I write a post or comment on HN, and then 5 weeks later someone writes a comment on it. How would I know they made this comment? Is there a view where it would appear first even though the parent is 5 weeks old?

View on HN

I think typically people signup for third-party services to email them when someone replies to them. I personally use hnreplies.com.

Well, that's horrifying.

Well, the data is already public. Anyone can technically scrape if they want.

The association of usernames with emails isn't public. But I was responding more to the sheer inelegance and inefficiency of such a solution, and the irony that such a contraption is required on a social media website that's mostly for people who make websites. Shall we have a third party website - and corresponding username/email database - for every missing feature?

HN is a technical embarrassment.

I wouldn't go that far. Maybe lacking this feature was a feature to PG. But if you want a HN clone that has this feature, I'm running one. Look at my submissions.

All that documentation and no commentary on the name of the project hahaha

The name of what project?

HN is a technical pride - if it ain't broken, don't fix it. I like not having "notifications". I like having 5 minute delay between comments, you know, to let the world process that information as well.

Regarding inefficiency, I doubt it takes more electricity than running an average sized social media, content, messaging, notification, whatever platforms. So in a consequentialist approach it works.

Your contentment with the imperfections of an unchangeable status quo is an inspiration to us all, but not everyone is so zen - as of this writing, 2075 HN users think it's "broke" enough to type their account details into a rando third part site. Email notifications - that you can turn off - are an obvious and utterly standard feature of all forum software since approximately ever. It's no wonder people miss it.

Is there a word for this? Defending obvious shortcomings as features because they are not fixable? It seems pretty endemic in hackerdom.

Masochistic minimalism?

I am occasionally guilty

HN probably still runs on a PIII chip (or did until recently) — you nailed it.

Only 2075? and I am one of them. the thing is technical people such as us (HN) tend to strive for perfection, efficiency, etc. when in the real world, practicality is key. HN works, email works, the combo works... Look what happened when Twitter changed their font. I still cringe when I see it.

And regarding a name - "it's not a bug, it's a feature" - these people are collectively known as "programmers".

I was expecting this to be a new account.

Did you buy this handle?

You can see replies to you by going to this page:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=codingclaws

I subscribe to my own via RSS. Replies pop up like magic.

Nit

> Threads are closed to new comments after two weeks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

https://www.hnreplies.com

Click on your username, then select the comments item. If you scroll down, you can see if anyone replied to your comments.

I'm aware of that, but it's bad UX with my 5 week example because I'd have to deliberately page back 5 weeks.

It's intentional, the 5 weeks old posts are not meant to be debated.

If you are active enough, then the same issue applies to 3 days.

Yes, and it's even more difficult if you started some thread that's got long, it's hard to find replies to your new comments that are there downstream. HN is probably one of few places where constantly hit Ctrl-F, so this certainly needs some improvement.

I think this is fine, I prefer to let a topic rest. Yes, I could go through all my comments from weeks ago and see if anyone replied, but that’s a little crazy. I’ll see you on the next topic if the same debate surfaces again.

Usually HN recycles a few debates for this reason and it pops up a few times over the course of months until everyone finally hashes it out. The breather is good, go to sleep, sleep on it, come back in a few weeks, and we’ll go at it again.

If I got constant alerts about comments, it’s going to devolve into an endless back and forth where no one took a break. Similarly, it also allows people to throw out their perspective against different people versus myopically trying to reconcile differences with just one person.

I’ve been downvoted to hell on a topic one day, and then several weeks later got modest amount of upvotes for the same opinion.

You can save a click by clicking on Threads at the top of the screen; goes to the same place.

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