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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

> 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.

    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?

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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